| 英文摘要 |
This paper investigates the diachronic change of the Progressive morpheme zai in Mandarin Chinese. The context of the Progressive zai is no longer restricted to use with only human subjects, there is now a wide range of uses with semantic verb types and it has led to increase of occurrences with the abstract ‘in’. This increase in the context of use gives rise to an increase in frequency of occurrence. In addition, as locative meaning of the morpheme zai develops into Progressive, the meaning becomes more general or abstract since it involves a gradual loss of its original meanings. That is, there is a decrease of Progressive zai co-occurring with locative expressions. Evidence shows that both temporal and locative senses exist from the beginning of gram, which supports generalization as a main mechanism of semantic change in the development of Progressive zai. Furthermore, the data indicate that aspectual meaning of grams can primarily come from the construction rather than relying on other lexical temporal expressions. |
