The Grammaticalization Of "xia-lai" And "xia-qu" In Chinese

This is a case analysis about the "xia-lai "and "xia-qu "based on the theory of grammaticalization. This thesis presents a fairly exhaustive study of the historical grammatical evolution about these two words.From the 7th century to the end of the 19th century, the syntactic forms are as follows:(1) The main verb(2) Verb+Xia-lai/Xia-qu(3) Verb+Jiang+Xia-lai/Xia-qu(4) Verb+Le+ Xia-lai/Xia-qu(5) Adjective+ (Jiang/ Le)Xia-lai/Xia-qu(6) Noun/pronoun+ Xia-lai/Xia-quIn modern Chinese, "Verb /Adjective +Jiang+Xia-lai/Xia-qu " have disappeared. Structurally, "xia-lai"and "xia-qu"are grammaticalized from verb, through the path of directional complement, to aspect marker.The meaning extensions of "xia-lai "and "xia-qu "display the scale of a metaphorical abstraction. More specifically, "xia-lai "and "xia-qu "denoting space category is metaphorically extended to temporal category, relative category and state category. Hence, the synchronic semantic connection between different lexical domains of "xia-lai "and "xia-qu "are explained.