Work

A diachronic study on the Mandarin complex directional complement guòlái ‘come over’ from the macro-event perspective

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: This study explores the diachronic development of the Mandarin complex directional complement guòlái ‘come over’ from the macro-event perspective. By analyzing data retrieved from the CCL corpus spanning 15 Chinese dynasties (1046 BCE-1920s), this study reveals that guòlái ‘come over’ can be initially traced back to the pattern guò N (ér) lái, where guò and lái functioned as distinct motion verbs. It then served as a motion verb, which subsequently grammaticalized into a directional complement. The diachronic evolution of the macro-event types represented by the V guòlái construction can tentatively be described as: Motion Event > Event of Realization > Event of State Change / Event of Action Correlating (> Event of Temporal Contouring). This study further proposes the Unidirectional Progression Hypothesis concerning the entire closed set of directional complements, suggesting that Mandarin directional complements evolve both in form and meaning along a unidirectional trajectory, becoming syntactically tighter and semantically more abstract.

Source: Cognitive Linguistics

DOI: 10.1515/cog-2024-0026

Authors: Yuhang Yang, Fuyin Thomas Li

Institution: Beihang University

Language: English

Topic: Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

Subfield: Language and Linguistics

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: diamond

Funders: National Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences, National Social Science Fund of China

Award: G4367850351