The development of Chinese pivotal construction: The perspective of grammaticalization

This dissertation presents a diachronic analysis of Chinese pivotal constructions (PVC) within the theoretical framework of grammaticalization. The goal of the study is twofold, namely (i) to discuss the historical source(s) of Chinese PVCs, and (ii) to contribute to the theory of grammaticalization of complex sentence constructions, because so far not much work has been done on the issue of grammaticalization of complex sentence constructions in an analytic language such as Chinese.; The "pivotal construction" is a complex sentence in which the main verb and the complement verb share an argument, which is simultaneously the object of the main verb and the subject of the complement verb. This lax criterion makes "pivotal construction" the cover term for sentences that are heterogeneous in terms of the semantic relation and the degree of integration between the two verbs. I propose a four-way classification of Chinese PVCs. The types of Chinese PVCs, namely the manipulative, resultative, descriptive and cause-complement PVCs, differ from each other based on the semantic relation and the degree of integration between the two verbs. I hypothesize that the four subtypes of PVCs can be traced back to different historical sources and developed at different paces.; My study shows that the overall tendency has been one of increase, including the expansion of the subtypes and the expansion of the paradigmatic scope of the verbs that can head this type of construction. The diachronic analysis presented here makes two claims regarding this tendency. First, all four subtypes of PVCs were derived from other complex sentence constructions, a process termed "constructional pivotalization." This process is characterized by the integration of the two clauses in the source constructions. Second, the expansion of the paradigmatic scope of the verbs heading PVCs, namely the individual verbs' acquisition of the usage of heading PVCs is termed "lexical pivotalization," a process triggered by analogy to the manipulative verbs, which started to head PVCs as early as the Oracle Bone Inscriptions period (17th ∼ 11th C BCE). The focus of the dissertation is the constructional pivotalization process.