TY  - BOOK
AU  - Meisterernst,Barbara
TI  - The Diachronic Development of Modal Expressions in Chinese: From Late Archaic to Middle Chinese 
T2  - Studies in Language Change [SLC] ,
SN  - 9783110737783
U1  - 495.109 
PY  - 2024///]
CY  - Berlin, Boston
PB  - De Gruyter Mouton
KW  - Historische Linguistik
KW  - Modalität
KW  - Syntax
KW  - LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General
KW  - bisacsh
KW  - Historical Linguistics
KW  - Modality
N1  - Frontmatter --; Acknowledgments --; Contents --; Abbreviations --; Introduction --; 1 The different modal categories in Late Archaic and Early Middle Chinese and their realization --; 2 The diachronic development of deontic modals in Early Middle Chinese --; 3 Modality and future marking in Late Archaic and Middle Chinese --; 4 Postverbal modals: The case of De --; 5 More on negation and polarity --; 6 A brief overview on the cross-linguistic development of modals --; Conclusion --; References --; Index; restricted access; Issued also in print
N2  - The present study is the first to apply a syntactic approach to the grammaticalization of Chinese modals, based on hypotheses on cross-linguistic diachronic developments of modals from lexical to functional categories as upward movement on a functional spine. The temporal framework of the study covers Late Archaic and Middle Chinese. Early Middle Chinese is a crucial turning point for the development of Chinese from a more synthetic to a more analytic language. This change is attributed e.g. to the loss of a former morphology, which also affects the modal system. Against this background, the negative cycle of Chinese, the relevance of polarity contexts, and the development of a new system of deontic, epistemic and future markers are analyzed. In addition to a comprehensive analysis of the syntactic processes involved in the diachronic changes of the Chinese modal system, the study also provides a comparison with the syntax of grammaticalization of the thoroughly discussed Germanic modals. This constitutes a broad basis for further analyses of the changes in the Chinese language during its long written history, but also for cross-linguistic studies on the syntax of grammaticalization and on linguistic universals
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110733013
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9783110733013
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9783110733013/original
ER  -