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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Diachronic Development of Modal Expressions in Chinese: From Late Archaic to Middle Chinese

The Diachronic Development of Modal Expressions in Chinese: From Late Archaic to Middle Chinese

Meisterernst, Barbara

Hardcover

Series: Studies in Language Change [Slc], Book 18

ChineseLinguistics

ISBN10: 3110737787
ISBN13: 9783110737783
Publisher: de Gruyter Mouton
Published: Nov 18 2024
Pages: 385
Weight: 1.70
Height: 1.00 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

The present study is the first to apply a syntactic approach to the grammaticalization of Chinese modals, based on hypotheses on cross-linguistic diachronic developments of modals from lexical to functional categories as upward movement on a functional spine. The temporal framework of the study covers Late Archaic and Middle Chinese. Early Middle Chinese is a crucial turning point for the development of Chinese from a more synthetic to a more analytic language. This change is attributed e.g. to the loss of a former morphology, which also affects the modal system. Against this background, the negative cycle of Chinese, the relevance of polarity contexts, and the development of a new system of deontic, epistemic and future markers are analyzed.

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