Abstract
Abstract In Medieval Chinese, a new function of QIE as a marker of polite imperative started to appear, and its use gradually increased in frequency until the late Old Mandarin era. This paper proposes a possible path for the development of this function of QIE in Medieval Chinese, and suggests that it might have evolved from its use for transient situations with hortative modality. Moreover, contact with Indic languages via the translation of Buddhist texts in the Medieval Chinese era also seems to have facilitated the development of QIE from a temporal adverb to a marker of polite imperative.
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