The Development of the Affective Construction in the Chaozhou Dialect Since the 19th Century

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the khɤʔ2-i33 乞伊 VP construction in the Chaozhou dialect. khɤʔ2-i33 乞伊 VP is a construction correlated with an adversative sense, which is called affective construction. A contrastive study on 19th -century Chaozhou dialect documents and the current dialect reveals that the affective construction is derived from the formal passive construction as a result of topicalization and syntacticization. This construction exists in many varieties of the coastal Min dialect group due to the topic-prominent property of this dialect group. This property causes coastal Min dialects to differ from other Chinese dialects in terms of typology, while having a strong internal consistency in the evolution of some syntactic structures, such as the affective construction at issue and the resumptive disposal construction.