International Journal of Chinese Linguistics - Volume 2, Issue 1, 2015

In Chinese, temporary classifiers form together with classifiers like piàn ‘piece’, tuán ‘something ball-shaped’, gǔ ‘stream or stand’ and pài ‘faction or clique’ a type of classifiers that has both mass and count forms. When occurring with the determinative quantifier yī to create a structure conveying the part-related reading, they appear in the ‘mass form’ (i.e., amount classifiers), but the ‘count form’ (i.e., number classifiers) when occurring with a genuine numeral. That is, the nominal mass/count distinction in Chinese is reflected at the classifier level as the distinction between the amount classifier and the number classifier. Moreover, this distinction is grammatical not ontological.

This paper investigates iʔ5 ‘one’ in Shiposheng, a vernacular dialect spoken in the north of Guangdong Province. Though iʔ5 in Shiposheng and yi ‘one’ in Mandarin share similar usages, they behave differently when cooccurring with the demonstrative, i.e., iʔ5 in Shiposheng cannot follow the demonstrative as its Mandarin counterpart does. It is proposed that the numeral for ‘one’ in Shiposheng is grammaticalized to an indefinite article, while yi ‘one’ in Mandarin is still a numeral though it could be used as an indefinite article in some cases. The different behaviors of the Mandarin yi ‘one’ and the Shiposheng iʔ5 are due to their distinct grammatical status.

In the Shangshui dialect, a sub-branch of Central Plains Mandarin, the functional words liao55 /liao0and le0, both derived from the verb liao55 ‘finish’, yet present very complex functions, and both of them only partially correspond to le0 in Standard Mandarin in function. It is found that liao55 and its weakened form liao0 take on diverse functions as a verb, a resultative complement, a completive marker, a perfect, or a conditional marker, and le0 shows a neat correspondence between its syntactic position and its grammatical meaning: the one directly attached to the main verb (M-le0) is a past perfective marker, and the other at the sentence final position (F-le0) is a marker indicating the change of a state, as in standard Mandarin. The co-occurrence of liao55, M-le0 and F-le0 doesn’t represent the simple composition of the grammatical meanings of those elements, while liao55…F-le0 and M-le0…F-le0 can be regarded as fixed constructions whose meanings are not completely transparent. Liao55 and its weakened form liao0 and le0 constitute a semantic cluster centralized on the ‘finishing’ meaning. The superimposition of meanings is commonly presented in the usage of liao55, liao0, le0 and their combinational forms, which means each of them can take on several grammatical meanings simultaneously when they occur in a particular context, and it is the superimposing of meanings that motivates the development of liao55 from one function to others. Liao55 and le0 only partly overlap with the corresponding forms in other dialects or languages, which specify the phenomenon of trans-category correspondence proposed by Liu (2013).

This paper investigates the semantic and syntactic properties of [N(oun)+de+Q(uantifier)] in Mandarin Chinese. Based on a comparison with the quantitive construction [Q+N], the paper advocates that [N+de+Q] is the Chinese partitive construction. Adopting a clausal approach to the syntactic derivation of partitives, it is hypothesized that Chinese partitives are formed via applying Predicate Inversion to a small clause that features a BELONG-type possession relationship. The difference between Chinese partitives and English-type partitives in terms of the surface word order is a result of a parametric variation with respect to whether the remnant of Predication Inversion undergoes further raising or not.

This article focuses on the Location morpheme-Demonstrative Cycle in Wu dialects. Wu dialects have a set of locational demonstratives that are formed from two morphemes, one denoting deixis and the other location. The demonstrative morpheme can often be dropped, in which case the location morpheme per se has to bear the function of the whole complex locational demonstrative. Further, the existence of ‘locational demonstratives + classifier + noun’ construction encoding locational possessive relation in Wu dialects provides an ideal context where the location morpheme can evolve into a basic demonstrative, thus forming a cycle of grammaticalization. The conclusion part further discusses various types of lexical renewal in different languages from the typological perspective.