고대 중국어 而의 문법화 연구

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to describe and explain the grammaticalization path of “而” in Ancient Chinese. In the PRE-Qin Dynasty, “而” was mainly used for two function: as a personal pronoun and a connective marker, but few people have been interested in the relationship between the two function. “而” is grammaticalized from a personal pronoun or a demonstrative pronoun, gradually becoming a connective maker and finally turning into a particle. The key point of this development is the position of “而” in the sentence. It was always located in the middle of two phrases. At first, “而” indicated the listener in a discourse situation; after that, “而” developed into a demonstrative in the text. Finally, “而” evolved into connectives, an adverbial marker and a particle. The grammaticalization paht of “乃” is similar to “而”.