The constructionalization of a set of connectives in Chinese

Abstract

In Modern Chinese, shì is found as part of the composition of a set of connectives, e.g. kěshì 'but,' yàoshì 'if.' The previous research (Dong 2004, etc.) assumes that the development of the set underwent the process of lexicalization (Lehmann 2002): the syntactic strings [Y COP] lost their internal constituency and fused into one unit over time. This paper, however, in the light of Brinton and Traugott's (2005) criteria for distinguishing lexicalization and grammaticalization, and Traugott and Trousdale's (2013) hypothesis of constructionalization, argues that the copula shì coalescing with the preceding lexemes and changing into a bound morpheme underwent grammatical constructionalization rather than what Lehmann calls lexicalization. I argue that the process of change involves grammatical constructionalization, based on the analyses of generality/schematicity, productivity and compositionality. I also consider pragmatic inferencing and analogy to be the motivation and reanalysis, analogization and subjectification to be the mechanisms of the process of constructionalization.