The Sources And Evolution Processes Of The Comitative Adverbs In Chinese

As the complexity of the objective world and human society,many actions are not performed by individuals,but by multiple members in a state of concomitant.So’concomitant’ is a widespread objective phenomenon.When humans recognize and conceptualize it,this concept forms the category of ’comitative’ by encoding in the language.There are two main grammatical expressions of the category of ’comitative’ in Chinese:one is the preposition,the other is adverb.This paper focuses on the latter,i.e.on the semantic source and dynamic evolution of Chinese comitative adverbs.The paper consists of six chapters,the main points of which are as follows.The first chapter is an introduction,which aims to clarify the relationship between the similar terminologies and to provide a precise definition of ’comitative’.On this basis,this chapter defines the scope of the study,summarizes the results and shortcomings of previous research,and sets out the intended aims of this study.The methodology and corpus used in the research process are attached at the end of this chapter.The second chapter provides an overview of Chinese comitative adverbs.According to their semantic sources,this chapter divides Chinese comitative adverbs into three types:’GROUP’,’SAME’ and ’TIME/LOCATION’,and examines their usage and origin of members in each type.The third chapter focuses on the comitative adverb yiqi(一起),which is the typical member of ’GROUP’.From a dynamic point of view,the different senses of yiqi(一起)all derived from the quantitative phrase yiqi(一起).It evolved the comitative adverb and the locative word in parallel evolution paths:(1)quantitative phrase>comitative adverb(’as a whole’)>comitative adverb(’at the same time’);(2)quantitative phrase>locative word(’in the same place’).The former path occurred in the syntactic context ’NP(PLURAL)+yiqi(一起)+VP’,where yiqi(一起)referred back to the plural NP and then occurred grammaticalization because of the semantic redundancy.The latter path was a semantic evolution resulting from metonymy.After the twentieth century,the comitative adverb yiqi(一起)was further grammaticalized into a connective postposition.The forth chapter focuses on the comitative adverb yigi(一 齐),which is the typical member of ’SAME’.We propose that the comitative adverb yiqi(一齐)was derived from the combination of the quantitative adverb yi(一)and the comitative adverb qi(齐),and it will be argued in detail from five perspectives.In pre-modern Chinese,there was a semantic sequence of ’comitative>quantitative’ in the evolution of yiqi(一齐),which occurred in the syntactic context ’NP[+PLURAL][-LIFE](object)+yiqi(一齐)+ VP’.This construction often expressed the sense of disposition,where yiqi(一齐)could only emphasize the unexceptional character of the object of disposition.The fifth chapter focuses on the comitative adverb yichu(一处),which is the typical member of ’TIME/LOCATION’.The word yichu(一处)is an emergent comitative adverb in Middle Chinese,derived from the locative word yichu(一处).When the locative word yichu(一处)means ’in the same place’,there are two elements forming the important semantic basis of ’comitative’.One is the plural subject,and the other is that the verb has the semantic feature of[+GATHERING].With the general tendency of the movement of locative complement in the Middle Chinese,yichu(一处)in the complementary position moved to the adverbial position,which became the syntactic precondition for its evolution.The semantic evolution modal of ’location>comitative’ is rare in the history of Chinese,but it has typological significance.The last chapter is a conclusion.Referring to the five sources of comitative in world languages as summarized by Heine&Kuteva,and taking into account the results of the previous chapters,this paper updates the semantic sources of comitative category to ten,and tentatively constructs a semantic network diagram centred on the concept of’comitative’.Finally,the paper summarizes the grammaticalization modals of the three types of comitative adverbs in Chinese,and proposes a prospect for further research on the grammaticalization of the comitative category.