Abstract
This chapter deals with synchronic variation through a diachronic lens. Mismatches between syntactic and semantic properties are usually rooted in diachronic development. This diachronic analysis reveals how large-scale changes in a language conspire to give rise to a novel construction. This study addresses this layer of synchronic-diachronic association through the analysis of the distribution of numeral phrases as polarity sensitive items in different patterns of word order in Mandarin Chinese. The analysis will show how senses of a polysemous construction have developed by being associated with semantically and syntactically relevant constructions through a series of changes in word order. In order to capture the tendencies of language change, a longitudinal corpus study is conducted to examine this distribution of numeral phrases as minimizers in different types of word order patterns. The distribution of minimizers reveals the connections between large-scale changes and developments of new constructions. The cross-period corpus analysis provides a quantitative treatment of the mechanisms and motivations behind a chain of diachronic changes.
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Notes
- 1.
The modern Mandarin examples are gathered from Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Modern Chinese (Sinica Corpus) and Chinese Gigaword (Huang 2009).
- 2.
This position can be filled by various unit words. All types of CLFs and MWs are treated as unit words (UW) (Zhang 2013). UW represents the ensemble of classifiers and measure words in this discussion unless otherwise specified.
- 3.
The institute-internal version of the corpus is not yet released to the public. Special thanks are due to Academia Sinica for the corpus access.
- 4.
The periodization of Chinese has been a controversial issue (cf. Mei 1997; Norman 1988; Pan 1982; Peyraube 1996). The division of subcorpora in Academia Sinica Ancient Chinese Corpus, such as Old Chinese, Middle Chinese and Early Mandarin, follows the classification of Wei (2000, 2003).
- 5.
Méi and méi yǒu can be used as either adverbs or verbs. They serve as the negative forms of ‘have’ when used as verbs and the verb yǒu can only be negated by méi (Xiao and McEnery 2008). Méi appeared earlier than méi yǒu, but méi and méi yǒu are mostly interchangeable in modern Mandarin.
- 6.
In order to distinguish the two types of wú in glossing, the negative existential wú is glossed as neg.ext, while the non-existential one is glossed as neg.
- 7.
This phrase has become an idiom with the meaning ‘stingy/not willing to help s.o. financially’ in modern Mandarin. Its word order has remained unchanged.
- 8.
This example is taken from Analects. The expression is interpreted as ‘a young orphan’ in the annotation of Analects in later dynasties.
- 9.
The phrase is from Analects. The context is that one of Confucius’s disciples enjoyed his spiritual life even though he only afforded a small portion of food.
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Chen, IH. (2018). The Diachronic Distribution of Chinese ‘One’-Phrases: Word Order and Minimizers. In: Diachronic Changes Underlying Synchronic Distribution . Studies in East Asian Linguistics. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0170-4_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0170-4_2
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