The grammaticalization of verbs of location movement into noun-phrase conjunctions in Archaic Chinese

Abstract

Abstract Previous studies of the grammaticalization paths of Chinese Noun-Phrase Conjunctions (NP-AND) have mainly focused on their development from comitative verbs, as in the cases of 與 yú ‘to be together with’, 共 gòng ‘to share’, 和 hé ‘to mingle’, and 同 tóng ‘to be the same’ > ‘to accompany’. This study focuses on the development of NP-AND from verbs of location movement (位移動詞, with the feature set [+verb, +motion, +goal]), such as 于 yú ‘to go to’, 越 yuè ‘to jump over to’, 暨 jì ‘to arrive at’, and 及 jí ‘to reach’, identifying changes that occurred in pre-Archaic Chinese (used from the 14th to the 11th c. BC), early Archaic Chinese (used from the 10th to the 6th c. BC), and late Archaic Chinese (from the 5th to the 2nd c. BC). To elucidate the origin and the grammaticalization path of each verb indicating goal of motion, this study examines their occurrences in excavated texts, such as the Oracle-Bone Inscriptions and Bronze Inscriptions, and in Archaic Chinese transmitted texts, such as The book of documents (Shàngshū 尚書), The book of odes (Shījīng 詩經), and Zuo’s commentary (Zuǒzhuàn 左傳). Based on this data, the study analyzes the core meaning of each verb and their grammaticalization paths. In addition, possible etymological relationships among 于, 越, 暨, and 及 are investigated. The grammaticalization path of each verb into an NP-AND can be formulated as V [+motion, +goal] > end point of a scope (from X to Y) > additive particle > NP-AND. Finally, cross-linguistic parallels are adduced to support the plausibility of the proposed grammaticalization path.