A study of the development of the Chinese correlative comparative construction from the perspective of constructionalization

Abstract

The paper addresses the emergence and development of the Chinese correlative comparative construction (CrCC) from the perspective of constructionalization. Most previous historical studies of the CrCC take a grammaticalization approach (e.g., Long 2013), focusing mainly on morphosyntax alone rather than investigating syntax and semantics in an integrated way. However, the architecture of construction grammar requires approaching linguistic analysis with both form and meaning equally in mind. This approach suggests that what have sometimes been considered to be merely different formal expressions of the CrCC are in fact two different constructions, one correlative, and the other a simple incremental. We identify the critical contexts (see Diewald & Smirnova 2010) that by hypothesis enabled the constructionalization of the CrCC, and point to the importance of considering network reorganization and multiple sources in the development of the simple incremental construction (see e.g., Boas 2008; Van de Velde et al. 2013).