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A novel approach to reconstruct the grammaticalization path of he 和: Evidence from Vietnamese
Author(s)
Date Issued
2024
Citation
Chan, K. W. (26.5.2024). A novel approach to reconstruct the grammaticalization path of he和: Evidence from Vietnamese. The 30th Annual Conference of International Association of Chinese Linguistics (IACL-30), Yonsei University, Korea.
Type
Conference Paper
Abstract
This research employs a novel approach to reconstruct the grammaticalization path of
he (和) in Middle Chinese. Despite previous research by scholars such as Wang (1958) and Pan
(1981), several issues regarding the diachronic development of he remains unresolved. The first
problem lies in the lack of an objective definition for conjunction and comitative preposition.
This leads to the second issue: the lack of consensus on the direction of grammaticalization of
he. Liu and Peyraube (1994) propose that he was grammaticalized from a verb into a comitative
preposition in the Tang dynasty, and at the same time into a coordinating conjunction. However,
other scholars argue for a different pathway: [verb > conjunction] (Liu 1989).
To address these issues, this research employs a database of first-hand data from 278
languages and second-hand data from 829 languages. A significant breakthrough has been made
from our study on Academia Sinica Tagged Corpus of Middle Chinese / Early Mandarin
Chinese and the CCL Corpus of Peking University (with a total of 5000+ tokens). It is found
that before he acquires the function of a coordinating conjunction, it is commonly used as a copatient preposition in the Tang dynasty. For example: 南人采之, 和其皮葉煎之. ‘People from
the south pick it (and) they fry it together with its skin and the leaves.’ (Lingbiao Luyi: Middle
chapter). Syntactically, he in this sentence is not bound by the Coordinating Structure Constraint
(Ross 1967). Semantically, it introduces inanimate co-patients “its skin and the leaves”.
Therefore, the grammaticalization path of he can be reconstructed as: verb > co-patient
preposition > coordinating conjunction (for inanimate NPs) > coordinating conjunction (for all
NPs).
Supporting this reconstruction are two pieces of evidence: he in several contemporary
Chinese dialects remains a coordinating conjunction but not a co-agent preposition.
Additionally, và, the cognate of he in Vietnamese, functions as a co-patient preposition and a
coordinating conjunction, yet it cannot introduce co-agents. Thus *Tôi sống và Mary (Intended:
‘I live with Mary.’) is ungrammatical while Tôi thích cà phê và sữa ‘I like coffee with milk.’ /
‘I like coffee and milk.’ is. This study provides a fresh perspective on the grammaticalization
path of he, contributing to the broader understanding of Chinese linguistics and typology.
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