The grammaticalization of yu from a verb to a function word

The purpose of this dissertation is to provide an explanation for the grammaticalization of yu from a verb to a function word in Chinese. The data is collected from the inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells of the Shang Dynasty (16th–11th century BC) and the Pre-Qin documents and is analyzed in the framework of grammaticalization. In the inscriptions and the Pre-Qin documents, yu is used both as a function word and as a verb. My hypothesis is that the usage as a function word is derived from a verb through a grammaticalization process. The grammaticalization of yu starts from the juxtaposition of two verbs. When yu is placed immediately after a locomotion verb, it loses its autonomy and becomes a posthead. Later on, by analogy, when yu is attached to other types of verbs, such as an activity verb, the semantic feature of yu shifts from a goal to the one indicating location. Corresponding to this semantic change, yu undergoes a grammatical change from a verb to a preposition. It no longer must follow a verb as a posthead; instead it may also be placed in a preverbal position. In this process, yu becomes a grammatical marker; its meaning is dependent upon linguistic contexts rather than having fixed lexical content. Motivated by the cognitive force, the syntactic distribution of the yu-phrases is also grammaticalized according to the temporal sequence of the events/states in the real world. Only those yu-phrases representing states that chronologically occur before the action denoted by the verb can be placed in the preverbal position while the ones representing states that chronologically occur after the action have to be placed in the postverbal position.