An Elementary Study On The History Of Grammaticalization Research In China And Western Countries

Grammaticalization refers to the formation and development of the grammatical elements or categories, it is typically reflected in the process of such a linguistic evolution in which a meaningful word or structure changes into a less meaningful or meaningless one. Grammaticalization is both gradual and abrupt and it is differently featured at different level of language. Grammaticalization is cross-linguistically universal in fusion, conflation, metaphorization, demotion, reanalysis, analogy, decategorization, bleaking, subjectivization, typological overgeneralization, and the increase of productivity and frequency. Despite their difference, the grammaticalization studies in both the west and China have take the same path-from case study to theoretical construction, from part to whole. The thesis attempts to investigate the history and implication of grammaticalization from the diachronic perspective focusing on the three themes: the history of grammaticalization study in the west, the history of grammaticalization study in the west, and similarities and differences in the history of grammaticalization research.It is generally admitted that the history of grammaticalization study in the west can be dated to Meillet in 1912, but its development was stopped by the structuralism in the long period from the 20s to 60s of the 20^th century. In the 70s of last century, With the rise and development of the historical linguistics, language typology and text linguistics, the grammaticalization study came into the focus of linguistic research, and the 80s of last century witnessed its great success in width and depth and differed in the combination of the diachronic and synchronic perspective.The history of grammaticalization study in China began in the 11^th century, much earlier than the west. The concept of grammaticalization was introduced by Zhou Boqi in the 13^th century, a linguist in Yuan Dynasty. China saw the prosperity of its grammaticalization at the turn of the 21^st century, characterized by the theoretical construction of the grammaticalization in Chinese and the exploration of its motion, mechanism and rules.The last two decades saw unexpected development of grammaticalization study around the world. Numerous books and papers concerned were published and grammaticalization was studied in combination with pragmatics, semantics, text linguistics, cognitive linguistics, language typology, language acquisition, language contact, et al.