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New Trends in Grammaticalization and Language Change
Edited by Sylvie Hancil, Tine Breban and José Vicente Lozano
[Studies in Language Companion Series 202] 2018
► pp. 315–331

The development of three classifiers into degree modifier constructions in Chinese

| University of Edinburgh

This paper is a constructionalisation case study on how a post-head degree modifying (sub)schema arose, which generalises over three constructions that are classifiers in origin: yi xie ‘some’, yi dian ‘one bit’, and yi xia ‘one downward motion’. Two factors underlie their developments: diminutive semantics, and pragmatically motivated syntactic contexts. Their diminutive semantics is general enough for them to be used as degree modifiers, while their postverbal and sentence-final positions, created by a specific topic-comment structure and zero anaphora, enable them to function as degree modifiers and even hedges. Despite similarities, they also display idiosyncrasies, such as collocational preferences.

Keywords: constructionalisation, classifier, degree modifier, Chinese
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Constructions and constructionalisation
  • 3.The history and analysis of yi xie
    • 3.1The history of yi xie
    • 3.2The analysis of yi xie
  • 4.The histories and analyses of yi dian and yi xia
    • 4.1The history of yi dian
    • 4.2The history of yi xia
    • 4.3The analyses of yi dian and yi xia
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 December 2018
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https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.202.13kuo
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