英文摘要 |
The present study explores xing in Chinese, especially focusing on the derivation of modal usage of xing. This paper introduces the syntactic distribution of xing in Modern Chinese. Through data in Old Chinese, Middle Chinese and Early Chinese, this paper finds that xing emerges to function as a modal since Early Chinese. This paper also employs data from four Southern Chinese dialects(Hakka, Cantonese, Taiwan Southern Min, Hainan Min) to argues that the modal meaning of xing may be affected by de ‘acquire,' which expresses modality in archaic Chinese. Unlike Modern Chinese, the four dialects remain to colloquially use de as a modal word, rather than xing. De in Hainan Min has very similar distribution with xing in modern Chinese. In addition, de and xing start to frequently co-occur in Early Chinese. The archaic data also support the argument of the paper that xing undergoes a semantic change via syntagmatic relationship from an activity verb to a modal. |