Book contents
- The Evolution of Chinese Grammar
- The Evolution of Chinese Grammar
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Conventions Used in the Examples
- Abbreviations and Symbols
- 1 Some Preliminaries
- 2 Copular Word and Construction
- 3 Focus and Wh- Words
- 4 Serial Verb Construction
- 5 Disyllabification
- 6 Resultative Construction
- 7 Information Structure
- 8 The Passive Construction
- 9 The Disposal Construction
- 10 Verb Copying and Reduplication
- 11 The Comparative Construction
- 12 The Ditransitive Construction
- 13 Aspect and Tense
- 14 Negation
- 15 The Boundedness of the Predicate
- 16 Classifiers
- 17 Demonstratives from Classifiers
- 18 Distal Demonstratives from Phonological Derivation
- 19 Pronouns, Plurals, and Diminutives
- 20 Structural Particles
- 21 Word Order and Relative Clauses
- 22 Conclusions
- References
- Primary Sources of Texts
- Index
17 - Demonstratives from Classifiers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 March 2023
Book contents
- The Evolution of Chinese Grammar
- The Evolution of Chinese Grammar
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Conventions Used in the Examples
- Abbreviations and Symbols
- 1 Some Preliminaries
- 2 Copular Word and Construction
- 3 Focus and Wh- Words
- 4 Serial Verb Construction
- 5 Disyllabification
- 6 Resultative Construction
- 7 Information Structure
- 8 The Passive Construction
- 9 The Disposal Construction
- 10 Verb Copying and Reduplication
- 11 The Comparative Construction
- 12 The Ditransitive Construction
- 13 Aspect and Tense
- 14 Negation
- 15 The Boundedness of the Predicate
- 16 Classifiers
- 17 Demonstratives from Classifiers
- 18 Distal Demonstratives from Phonological Derivation
- 19 Pronouns, Plurals, and Diminutives
- 20 Structural Particles
- 21 Word Order and Relative Clauses
- 22 Conclusions
- References
- Primary Sources of Texts
- Index
Summary
This chapter demonstrates that the demonstratives zhè and gè in Mandarin Chinese and its dialects were grammaticalized from two general classifiers in late Middle Chinese, both of which originated from ordinary nouns. Based on diachronic facts and dialectal data, the present analysis addresses the motivation and mechanism for the course of development from classifiers to demonstratives. This finding may make a significant contribution to historical linguistics.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Evolution of Chinese Grammar , pp. 411 - 438Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023