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Abstract

Abstract

This paper examines the multiple functions of the construction as a discourse marker (DM) in Modern Chinese, as well as its historical development. I argue that serves various functions in Modern Chinese, including as an elaborative, contrastive, inferential, and topic shift marker. While some research has explored the evolution of the chunked , none have approached it from a diachronic constructional perspective or provided a convincing developmental trajectory of the DM. Drawing on extensive classical data, I maintain that the DM originated from a directional verbal phrase used as a complement-taking predicate, evolved into a circumstantial adverbial, then into a conjunct, and finally into a DM. This trajectory aligns partially with the Trajectory Hypothesis proposed by Traugott (2022) for the evolution of DMs in English. This study contributes to cross-linguistic typological research on the emergence of pragmatic and discourse devices and how text coherence develops in human languages.

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/content/journals/10.1075/prag.24010.zha
2025-05-27
2025-06-24
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