THESIS
2014
xii leaves, 267 pages : illustrations ; 30 cm
Abstract
The serial verb construction (SVC), also known as verb serialization, is a grammatical
phenomenon extensively distributed in African, Southeast Asian, Pacific, and South
American languages. Modern Chinese is widely accepted in the literature of Chinese
linguistics and general linguistics as a typical serializing language. The SVC is generally
believed to be the source of a number of crucially important grammatical morphemes and
constructions in Modern Chinese. As a remote predecessor of Modern Chinese, Archaic
Chinese is also assumed to be a serializing language by the majority of linguists working on
historical syntax of Chinese.
This dissertation presents a critical examination of SVCs in Archaic Chinese,
particularly Late Archaic Chinese, in an approach informed by contempo...[
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The serial verb construction (SVC), also known as verb serialization, is a grammatical
phenomenon extensively distributed in African, Southeast Asian, Pacific, and South
American languages. Modern Chinese is widely accepted in the literature of Chinese
linguistics and general linguistics as a typical serializing language. The SVC is generally
believed to be the source of a number of crucially important grammatical morphemes and
constructions in Modern Chinese. As a remote predecessor of Modern Chinese, Archaic
Chinese is also assumed to be a serializing language by the majority of linguists working on
historical syntax of Chinese.
This dissertation presents a critical examination of SVCs in Archaic Chinese,
particularly Late Archaic Chinese, in an approach informed by contemporary typological
research on SVCs across languages in the world, with the following major findings.
(1) Contrary to the opinion of recent skeptics on the validity SVC as a distinct
grammatical category, we present a series of evidence showing that the SVC in Chinese
indeed exhibits a number of syntactic and semantic properties distinguishable from other
types of VP sequences such as coordinate construction, adjunct construction and other
constructions with similar surface forms. (2) After an extensive discussion on the difficulty
in defining and identifying SVCs, particularly those in Archaic Chinese, a new set of
criteria for the SVC, more precise and practical, is proposed. (3) Based on the new criteria,
a comprehensive examination of SVCs in Late Archaic Chinese is conducted, which reveals
that the number of genuine SVCs, in terms of both type and token, is drastically lower than
that what was reported in previous research. This observation leads to the logical
conclusion - contrary to the general belief in the field - that Late Archaic Chinese cannot be
taken as a typical serializing language. It suggests that the Chinese language may have
undergone an important typological shift from a marginal serializing language in the
Archaic period to a full-fledged serializing language in the period of Medieval Chinese. (4)
Despite of its low occurrence, the SVC plays a crucial role in the development of a number
of important grammatical morphemes and constructions. A revision of the universal
grammaticalization paths postulated by typologists is further proposed to accommodate the
data from Archaic Chinese.
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