THE STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE CHINESE COPULAR
CONSTRUCTION
A DISSERTATION
SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT
OF EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES AND CULTURES
AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES
OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
IN CHINESE
Fangqiong Zhan
August 2012
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/
This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/ps422bz6821
© 2012 by Fangqiong Zhan. All Rights Reserved.
Re-distributed by Stanford University under license with the author.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
ii
I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequatein scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Chao Sun, Primary Adviser
I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequatein scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Elizabeth Traugott, Co-Adviser
I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequatein scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Yoshiko Matsumoto
I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequatein scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
John Wang
Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies.
Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost Graduate Education
This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file inUniversity Archives.
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ABSTRACT
This thesis examines the structure and function of the Chinese copular construction
within the framework of Construction Grammar (Goldberg 2006; Croft 2001; etc.) and
Constructionalization (Trousdale 2010; Traugott and Trousdale 2011; etc.). My analysis
begins with the argument that shì is the systematic copula verb in Chinese. After
identifying problems with previous accounts, I outline my own, original analysis of the
syntax and semantics of the copular construction. I define the Chinese copula as an
invariant non-inflectional verb that co-occurs with certain lexemes when they together
form the predicate of a copular sentence. I propose that the copular construction is a form
and meaning pairing: [(XPi) COP XPj] (XP=NP/VP/S)[SEMi copulative linking
SEMj] with [NP COP NP] as the prototype. The copular construction has two
subschemas: specificational and predicational.
A cleft sentence is a special specificational copular sentence. The Chinese cleft
construction is a form and meaning pairing: [NPi COP NOMj] (NOM=(ADV/TP/PP)
NP/VP/S de)[SEMi specificational+contrastive SEMj]. I suggest shì is consistently
the copula verb in the cleft construction and signals the immediate post-copula element as
contrastive focus. The cleft construction also has two subschemas: cleft-obj and cleft-sbj.
My constructional analysis improves on similar accounts of the cleft sentences in two
ways. First, my analysis helps understand the grammatical status of shì and provides a
schematic framework to understand the commonality and distinction between cleft
sentences and copular sentences. Second, my analysis allows for a straightforward
account of the relationship between the two subschemas of the cleft construction, and of
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the relationship among variations of the cleft-sbj.
The thesis also examines the constructionalization processes of the copular
construction and the cleft construction. I suggest that the Old Chinese (500 BCE- 200
CE) topic-comment construction, in which the demonstrative pronoun shì occurred at the
subject position of the comment clause functioning as an anaphor, was reanalyzed as a
subject-predicate construction via analogization to the construction of the Old Chinese
verb wéi ‘to be.’ As the copular construction was entrenched and conventionalized in
Middle Chinese (200 CE -1000), it gave rise to the emergence of the cleft construction
through host-class expansion, syntactic expansion (the nominalization was recruited into
the predicate position of a copular sentence), and semantic-pragmatic expansion.
Together, my synchronic and diachronic analyses add up to a maximally
explanatory account of the copula shì and the copular construction.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My interest in the topic of grammaticalization and constructionalization was first inspired
by a graduate seminar on the history of Chinese taught by Chaofen Sun during my first
year of PhD study at Stanford University, and subsequently in a seminar on the theory of
constructionalization taught by Elizabeth Traugott. More recently I have immersed
myself in the theory of construction grammar and constructionalization, and have been
amazed by the extent to which this framework can account for Chinese data both
synchronically and diachronically. My dissertation process has basically entailed
scrutinizing data from both classical and modern Chinese, consulting a broad range of
scholarly works, and educating myself in the new critical framework and modes of
analysis. None of this would have been possible without the guidance and support I have
received from my graduate advisors, teachers, friends, and family.
First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisors, Chaofen Sun and Elizabeth
Traugott. Over the years, Chaofen has continuously stimulated my academic curiosity
and supported my aspiration to search for new ideas and new methods. He has always
been open and available for discussion, and his invaluable guidance and feedback have
been the fuel that allowed me to develop this dissertation. I am also truly lucky and
grateful to have had Elizabeth Traugott as my co-advisor; it was Elizabeth who
introduced me to construction grammar and constructionalization, and saw me through
the writing. She read every single draft of every chapter with meticulous care and her
theoretical vision and analytical insight helped shape this project from its inception. I
thank both Chaofen and Elizabeth for countless illuminating discussions and for their
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unflagging patience, support, and encouragement. This dissertation could not have been
written without them.
I also owe a great debt of gratitude to Yoshiko Matsumoto for serving on my
committee, reading the chapters, and making time for discussions throughout the
dissertation process. I thank her for raising insightful questions and offering informed,
incisive comments and feedback.
I am also deeply grateful to John Wang, who has been serving as one of my
references during my job hunting. He has always treated me with understanding and
patience. I thank him for attending my oral defense, and for many wonderful and
inspiring literature classes. I also thank Elizabeth Bernhardt for chairing my oral defense
and Ban Wang for his constant advice throughout my graduate study.
I wholeheartedly thank Sandra A. Thompson and Hsiao-Jung (Sharon) Yu, my
advisors at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who opened the door of
functional linguistics to me and brought me into this fascinating world of linguistics to
which I intend devoting the rest of my life. I also thank John Nathan, Ron Egan, and my
other teachers at UCSB. They were tremendously helpful when I first came to United
States.
I am truly fortunate to have been surrounded by many great friends. I especially
want to thank Zhang Yu. We came to Stanford from UCSB together, and we have shared
so many laughs and memories. Without her, my graduate life would have been much
lonelier and less colorful. I would also like to thank Xiaoman Miao, Jingxia Lin, Chenshu
Zhou, Tingting Zhao, Yanshuo Zhang, Jeff Knott, Melvin Su, Ming Chew Teo, Hisaaki
Wake, Judy Kroo, Yao Wu, Rui Wang, and many other friends in the department as well
viii
as Xiaofang Zhou, Hong Zeng, Huazhi Wang, Marina Chung, and Nina Lin who have
helped me improve my language teaching.
I want to thank my dear friend Jerry Scots, who has been keeping me company
from afar throughout my dissertation writing. I thank him for the extensive discussions
and arguments that kept me awake, sane, and productive. I thank him for listening to my
complaints and excitement, and offering support and encouragement. Without him, the
writing process would have been a tedious chore.
Finally, I dedicate whatever I have achieved, with love and gratitude, to my parents
Huadong Zhan and Yajun Ma, and thank them from the bottom of my heart for their
unconditional love, constant care and support throughout my life.
ix
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tables .................................................................................................................... xii
List of Figures .................................................................................................................. xiii
Abbreviations................................................................................................................... xiv
1 Introduction.......................................................................................................................1
1.1 The construction shì in Modern Chinese .......................................................................1
1.1.1 ‘Right, okay, or fine’..............................................................................................2
1.1.2 Demonstrative pronoun..........................................................................................3
1.1.3 Existential ..............................................................................................................3
1.1.4 Copulative linking..................................................................................................4
1.1.5 “Focus marker” ......................................................................................................6
1.1.6 Bound morpheme...................................................................................................9
1.1.7 Some questions about shì.......................................................................................9
1.2 An overview of the literature on shì ............................................................................11
1.2.1 The grammatical category of shì..........................................................................11
1.2.2 The origin of the copula shì .................................................................................16
1.2.3 The previous research on Chinese cleft sentences...............................................19
1.2.4 The development of Chinese clefts......................................................................24
1.3 Data and methodology .................................................................................................27
1.4 An outline of the structure of the thesis .......................................................................29
2 Construction Grammar and Constructionalization .........................................................32
2.1 Construction Grammar.................................................................................................32
2.1.1 Construction grammar as opposed to modular models........................................32
2.1.2 Three major constructional approaches ...............................................................35
2.1.3 Some relevant concepts of Construction Grammar .............................................40
2.1.3.1 Taxonomy and inheritance..............................................................................40
2.1.3.2 Coercion..........................................................................................................42
2.1.3.3 A usage-based model ......................................................................................44
2.2 Constructionalization ...................................................................................................46
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2.2.1 Two approaches to grammaticalization ...............................................................48
2.2.2 Motivation: analogy and ‘invited inference’........................................................50
2.2.2.1 Analogy...........................................................................................................50
2.2.2.2 Invited inference .............................................................................................51
2.2.3 Mechanisms: reanalysis and analogization..........................................................52
2.2.3.1 Reanalysis .......................................................................................................53
2.2.3.2 Analogization..................................................................................................55
2.2.4 Constructional taxonomies...................................................................................57
2.2.5 Constructionalization dimensions........................................................................59
2.2.6 Constructionalization and constructional changes...............................................60
2.3 Summary ......................................................................................................................61
3 A copula analysis of shì in Chinese cleft sentences........................................................62
3.1 Introduction..................................................................................................................62
3.2 The syntactic concept of copula...................................................................................66
3.3 The semantics of copula...............................................................................................74
3.4 The constructional framework .....................................................................................78
3.5 The concept of cleft .....................................................................................................81
3.5.1 The cleft construction ..........................................................................................81
3.5.2 An adverb analysis of shì in the cleft sentence ....................................................87
3.5.3 My analysis on Chinese cleft sentences...............................................................95
3.6 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................99
4 The constructionalization of shì: from a demonstrative pronoun to a copula...............102
4.1 Introduction................................................................................................................102
4.2 Previous research on shì.............................................................................................106
4.3 The development of shì..............................................................................................111
4.3.1 A syntactic analysis of the classic copular sentence (CCS) in Old Chinese ......111
4.3.2 The constructionalization of the copula .............................................................115
4.3.2.1 The semantic relatedness between the demonstrative pronoun and the
copula .......................................................................................................................115
4.3.2.2 The enabling context .....................................................................................117
4.3.2.3 The mechanism of the constructionalization of shì.......................................122
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4.3.3 Statistical evidence for constructionalization of shì and further expansion.......129
4.3.3.1 The increase of adverbs preceding shì ..........................................................130
4.3.3.2 The decrease of sentence final particles ........................................................131
4.3.3.3 The decrease of the complex topic ................................................................132
4.3.3.4 The increase of [NP shì NP]..........................................................................133
4.3.3.5 The competition between shì and wéi ...........................................................134
4.4 Typology and Conclusion ..........................................................................................137
5 The constructionalization of the cleft construction.......................................................140
5.1 Introduction................................................................................................................140
5.2 The emergence of the cleft construction....................................................................142
5.2.1 Shì: the copula in early Middle Chinese (CE 200-CE 600) ...............................142
5.2.2 Nominalization [XP de]: in late Middle Chinese (CE 700-CE 1000) ................150
5.2.3 The emergence of the cleft construction ............................................................154
5.2.3.1 The emergence of [NP COP NOM] (NOM=XP de) .....................................154
5.2.3.2 The emergence of the cleft construction .......................................................156
5.2.3.3 The emergence of the cleft-sbj ......................................................................159
5.3 Constructionalization .................................................................................................166
5.3.1 Motivation: Analogy and pragmatic inferencing ...............................................166
5.3.2 Mechanism: Analogization and Reanalysis .......................................................169
5.3.3 Conventionalization: Frequency.........................................................................172
5.3.4 Generality, productivity and compositionality ...................................................173
5.4 Constructionalization .................................................................................................175
6 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................177
6.1 Summary of the thesis................................................................................................177
6.2 Thoughts on future study ...........................................................................................183
6.2.1 Shì as a bound morpheme...................................................................................184
6.2.2 Relativization and nominalization......................................................................184
6.2.3 The development of contrastive focus................................................................185
6.3 Summary ....................................................................................................................185
Bibliography ....................................................................................................................186
xii
LIST OF TABLES
Table 4.1 The adverb distribution of preceding shì in the string [(XP) shì XP (PTCL)] 130
Table 4.2 The final particle distribution in the string [(XP) shì XP (PTCL)]..................131
Table 4.3 The pre-copula complex phrase and simple NP distribution in the string
[(XP) shì XP (PTCL)]......................................................................................................132
Table 4.4 The NP/VP distribution of the second XP in the string
[(XP) shì XP (PTCL)]......................................................................................................134
Table 4.5 The competition between shì ‘to be’ and wéi ‘to be’ I. ...................................135
Table 4.6 The competition between shì ‘to be’ and wéi ‘to be’ II. ..................................136
Table 4.7 The distribution of wéi...suǒ.... ........................................................................137
xiii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 2.1 Model of the symbolic structure of a construction in Radical Construction
Grammar.....................................................................................................................39
Figure 2.2 An example of the taxonomic hierarchy of construction .................................41
Figure 2.3 Constructional changes related to constructionalization ..................................60
Figure 3.1 The constructional schematic taxonomy of the prototypical Chinese
copular construction ...................................................................................................80
Figure 3.2 The constructional schematic taxonomy of the Chinese cleft construction .....87
Figure 3.3 A comparison of the schematic copular construction and the cleft
construction ..............................................................................................................100
Figure 5.1 Model of the development of the cleft-obj and cleft-sbj ................................170
Figure 5.2 The development of the constructional schematic taxonomy of the
prototypical Chinese copular construction ...............................................................171
Figure 6.1 The constructional schematic taxonomy of the prototypical Chinese
copular construction .................................................................................................178
Figure 6.2 A comparison of the schematic copular construction and the cleft
construction ..............................................................................................................179
xiv
ABBREVIATIONS
ASSOC Associative
AFF Affirmative
AP Adjectival phrase
ASP Aspect marker
BA BA construction
CCS Classical copular sentence
CRS Current related state
CL Classifier
COP Copula
DUR Durative
EXP Experiential
FO Focus operator
FM Focus marker
NEG Negative
NOM Nominalization/Nominalizer
NP Noun phrase
PERF Perfective
PL1 First person Plural
PP Prepositional phrase
PTCL Particle
xv
REL Relative clause/Relativizer
S Clause
SG1 First person singular
SG2 Second person singular
SG3 Third person singular
TP Time phrase/Topic phrase
VP Verbal phrase
1
Chapter 1 Introduction This thesis examines the synchronic structure and diachronic development of the Chinese
copula shì and related constructions within the framework of Construction Grammar
(Goldberg 2006; Croft 2001; etc.) and Constructionalization (Trousdale 2010; Traugott
and Trousdale 2011; etc.). In the constructional model, linguistic patterns are viewed as
constructions. A construction is a form and meaning pairing. Constructions are of any
shape from complex sentences to inflectional affixes. “It’s constructions all the way
down.” (Goldberg 2006:18) Constructions are not considered the epiphenomenal
byproducts of a combination of componential meaning and highly general rules. Instead,
aspects of form and meaning are encoded by the construction itself. For my study of the
Chinese copular construction, by targeting both the meaning and form, the constructional
approach accounts for a large range of data. (See Chapter 2 for a comprehensive and
detailed theoretical discussion on Construction Grammar and Constructionalization)
1.1 The construction shì in Modern Chinese
The word shì occurs in pànduàn jù, a type of sentence that literally means ‘judgment
sentence’ in the Chinese linguistic literature, serving to convey speaker’s belief or
judgment. The word shì is interesting in that it is extensively productive and appears to
occur in a variety of syntactic-semantic contexts. The Modern Chinese Corpus from
Peking University (CCL 2009) shows the tokens of shì rank as the third most frequent
2
within the corpus next to de (the structural particle) and yī ‘a, one’. The functions of shì
in Modern Chinese can be listed as: 1) ‘right, okay, or fine;’ 2) demonstrative pronoun; 3)
existential; 4) copulative linking; 5) “focus marker;” 6) bound morpheme. In the
following discussion, I outline the examples of the major types of shì, and the thesis
basically addresses the functions 2)-5).
1.1.1 ‘Right, okay, or fine’
In (1), shì means ‘right, okay, or fine,’ which is equivalent to the stative verb hǎo ‘okay,’
or duì ‘right.’1 In (1a), it indicates affirmation to the previous statement that the other
speaker uttered. In (1b), shì denotes agreement to the command or suggestion given by
the other speaker in the dialogue. Shì in (1c) is the verbal predicate modified by the
adverb jìu ‘just’ following the clausal subject nǐ bié kàn ‘you do not watch,’ and it is
evaluative, indicating speaker’s judgment.
(1) a. 是 啊, 这 话 没 错
shì a, zhè huà méi cuò
right PTCL, these words not wrong
‘Right, these words (are) not wrong.’
b. 你 别 看 就 是 了
nǐ bié kàn jiù shì le
SG2 not watch just okay CRS
‘If you don't watch, it will be fine.’
1 I follow Chao (1968) and Li and Thompson (1981) who treat adjectives in Chinese as intransitive verbs, or stative verbs in that just like regular verbs they are subject to aspect inflections.
3
c. 是, 我 一定 完成 任务
shì , wǒ yídìng wánchéng rènwù
yes, SG1 definitely complete mission
‘Yes. I’ll definitely complete the mission.’
1.1.2 Demonstrative pronoun
Shì functions as a demonstrative pronoun occurring in the idioms in (2). It has been
argued by scholars (Wang 1937; Feng 1995; Shi and Li 2001; etc.) that the copula shì in
Modern Chinese evolved from the demonstrative pronoun in Old Chinese, and examples
(2) present some of the Modern Chinese idioms in which shì retains the trace of the
classical demonstrative pronoun
(2) 他 唯 利 是 图
tā wéi lì shì tú
SG3 only profit this attempt
‘He attempts only profit.’
1.1.3 Existential
Example (3a) is an instance of existential in which shì serves to indicate existence. Shì in
this type of sentence is often compared with the existential verb yǒu ‘have’ in Modern
Chinese, as in (3b). The difference between the existential yǒu and shì has been
extensively discussed in the Chinese linguistic literature. Jin (1995) suggests the
existential yǒu indicates a number of entities that exist at a certain location, one of which
is specified as the complement of the verb yǒu, and hence in (3b), in front of my house,
4
there are a number of entities, one of which is the river; whereas the existential shì
expresses there is the only entity that exists at the location. By employing the existential
shì, the speaker ignores other entities that may co-exist at the same location, and profiles
the one that is realized as the complement of shì. Therefore, in (3a), for the speaker, the
river is the only relevant entity that appears in front of my house.
(3) a. 我 家 门 前 是 条 河
wǒ jiā mén qián shì tiáo hé
my house door in front of COP CL river
‘In front of my house, there is a river (excluding other things).’
b. 我 家 门 前 有 条 河
wǒ jiā mén qián yǒu tiáo hé
my house door in front of have CL river
‘In front of my house, there is a river.’
1.1.4 Copulative linking
Examples in (4) are prototypical copular sentences, in which shì is the copulative linking
verb indicating the nominal relationship between the subject and the complement of shì.
Copular sentences exhibit a variety of nominal meanings: in (4a), tā ‘she’ and wǒ mèimei
‘my sister’ are equational; in (4b), the restricted set měiguó zǒngtǒng ‘the president of the
US’ is specified by Àobāmǎ ‘Obama;’ in (4c), the subject Mali ‘Mary’ is characterized by
the post-copula complement huáng tóufà ‘blond hair.’
5
(4) a. 她 是 我 妹妹
tā shì wǒ mèimei
SG3 COP my younger sister
‘She is my younger sister.’
b. 奥巴马 是 美国 总统
àobāmǎ shì měiguó zǒngtǒng
Obama COP US president
‘Obama is the president of the US.’
c. 玛丽 是 黄 头发
mǎlì shì huáng tóufà
Mary COP blond hair
‘Mary is a blond.’
Li and Thompson (1976, 1981: 15-20) argue that “subject” in Chinese is not exactly
equivalent to “subject” in English; in Chinese “‘subject’ is not a structurally definable
notion” (1981: 19) since it can always be a zero. It is also not exactly equivalent to topic,
as, unlike topic, it must have “a direct semantic relationship with the verb as the one that
performs the action or exists in the state named by the verb” (1981: 15). In this view, the
clause has a “subject” (defined on semantic rather than grammatical grounds), but there is
often a topic that precedes the “subject” as well. For example:
(5) 豆腐 我 吃了
dòufu wǒ chī le
Tofu SG1 eat-PREF
‘The tofu, I have eaten.’
6
Example (5) is a topic-comment sentence to be in response to a question like ‘have
you eaten tofu?’ In (5) dòufu ‘tofu’ has been introduced and is the topic about which ‘I
have eaten’ is said; wǒ chīle ‘I have eaten’ is the comment clause with the subject wǒ ‘I’
and the predicate chīle ‘have eaten.’ Based on this, Li and Thompson developed the idea
of dividing languages into two types: “subject-prominent” (e.g. English) and “topic-
prominent” (e.g. Chinese). Both types have both “subject” and “topic,” but the
prominence of “subject” vs. “topic” differs in the two types. Many scholars including
Comrie (1981), Li and Thompson (1976) suggest that Chinese is a “topic-prominent”
language, that is, a language in which the structure of the clause takes the form of a topic,
about which something is to be said, and a comment, which is what is said about the topic,
rather than being a language with a subject-predicate structure like that of English.
I take the position that term “topic” is an information-structuring and pragmatic
notion (Lambrecht 2004). In the topic-comment construction such as (5) or topic-
resumption construction such as ‘as for tofu, I have eaten it,’ the topic takes the slot
preceding the comment clause. However, in the copular sentences like (4), the pre-copula
NPs are the topic, and the post-copula predicate NPs encode informational focus (Xu
2002, section 3.5.1 in Chapter 3), which means the subject usually encodes old/given
information as topic, whereas the post-copula predicate as a whole indicates new
information that is the informational focus.
1.1.5 “Focus marker”
A focus marker is a particle typically precedes the focus constituent (Hartmann and
Zimmermann 2006). Because Chinese is a verb-medial (VO) language, informational
7
focus in Chinese typically falls on the post-verbal elements, and therefore informational
focus is unmarked. The so-called focus marker in Chinese is in fact a particle that comes
before an element and marks it as contrastive focus. Many scholars (Huang 1998; Teng
1976; Fang 1995; Dong 2004; etc.) claim that shì is a contrastive focus marker in the
sentences like (6), which marks the immediate post-copula time phrases zuótiān
‘yesterday’ in (6a) and qùnián ‘last year’ in (6b&c) as contrastive focus. However, this
thesis proposes that (6) are examples of the cleft construction, and it is the cleft
construction as a whole that marks the immediate post-copula element as contrastive
focus. Shì is a copula verb rather than a particle in sentences like (6), and it signals and
indicates contrastive focus, but it is not a focus marker. (See Chapter 3 for further
discussion)
(6) a. 蛋糕 是 昨天 做 的
dàngāo shì zuótiān zuò de
cake COP yesterday make NOM
‘It was yesterday that the cake was made.’
b. 我 是 去年 来 美国 的
wǒ shì qùnián lái měiguó de
SG1 COP last year come US NOM
‘It was last year that I came to the US.’
c. 我 是 去年 来 美国
wǒ shì qùnián lái měiguó
SG1 COP last year come US
‘It was last year that I came to the US.’
8
Examples in (6) present a different information structure from (4), in which the pre-
copula NP is still the topic, but the primary informational content is placed in the
immediate post-copula focal position to assert what is presupposed by the speaker and the
hearer. When the phonetic stress is located on shì, it affirms the whole sentence as an
assertion, which means ‘it is true that…’ e.g., ‘it is true that this cake was made yesterday’
in (6a), and ‘it is true that I came to the US last year’ in (6b&c). This thesis does not
address this case but only considers the case in which shì indicates the immediate
following element as contrastive focus.
Examples like (6) are treated as instances of shì…de construction (Chao 1968; Li
and Thompson 1981) or the cleft construction (Paris 1977; Hashimoto 1969; Teng 1979;
etc.). A further property of the cleft sentences is that they exhibit contrastive focus, an
exhaustiveness and exclusiveness implicature (Kiss 1998). For example, in (6a), we
understand that ‘yesterday’ is the day and the only day that the cake was made. These
sentences are presuppositional: in (6a), it is presupposed that ‘the cake was made on a
certain day,’ and it is an appropriate answer to the question dàngāo shì shénme shíhou
zuò de? ‘cake COP when make NOM; when was the cake made?’
Some scholars (Teng 1979; Huang 1998; etc.) distinguish (6a) from (6b&c) in that
(6a) seemingly have the syntactic configuration [NP shì NOM] (NOM=(ADV/PP/TP2)
NP/VP/S de), whereas (6b&c) have the structure of [NP shì VP (PCTL)] (see the
structure of the Chinese cleft in 1.2.3). They are different structures and accordingly the
shì in each has a different syntactic status: it is the copula verb in (6a), but it is not so in
(6b&c). Huang (1998) explicitly claims that shì in (6b&c) has the status of an adverb. I
argue that shì cannot be an adverb in (6b&c) because it does not modify the verb lái ‘to 2 Here, TP=time phrase
9
come’ or the VP lái měiguó ‘come to US’, instead, it is still a copula verb that indicates
copulative linking and indicates contrastive focus. A detailed discussion on this is
provided in Chapter 3.
1.1.6 Bound morpheme
In (7), shì is a bound morpheme forming part of the connectives through coalescence
with the preceding lexemes. In (7a), it co-exists with kě, which was a modal adverb in
classical Chinese and they together form a disyllabic connective kěshì ‘but’ introducing a
clause contrastive to the previous one. The adverb hái ‘still’ in (7b) and shì together form
a connective háishì ‘or,’ denoting an alternative question.
(7) a. 他 虽然 很 穷, 可是 很 有 志气
tā suīrán hěn qióng , kěshì hěn yǒu zhìqì
SG3 although very poor, but very have ambition
‘He was very poor, but he was very ambitious.’
b. 你 要 喝 咖啡,还是 喝 茶?
nǐ yào hē kāfēi , háishì hē chá
SG2 want drink coffee, or drink tea
‘Do you want to drink coffee or tea?’
1.1.7 Some questions about shì
1.1.1-1.1.6 exemplify the major uses of shì in Modern Chinese. This thesis aims at the
functions of shì from 1.1.2-1.1.5. The functions in 1.1.1 and 1.1.6 are relevant but out of
10
the scope of the copular construction that I focus on in this thesis. Examples (2-4) and (6)
bring up a number of unsolved questions that will be addressed in the thesis.
First, in the above examples, what is the status of shì? Is it a copula verb in all uses
of (2-4) and (6)? How do we define the copula in Chinese? What is its syntactic function?
Does it share similar syntactic properties with the English copula ‘to be’ and its Indo-
European equivalents? Does the copula encode any meaning? If not, where do the
meanings of the copular sentences come from?
Second, what is the syntactic structure of the cleft sentence? What is the meaning of
a cleft sentence? What is its information structure? What is its relationship with regular
copular sentences? Do they really have distinct syntactic structures? Does shì have
different syntactic status in (6a), (6b) and (6c)? If not, why do they appear to be distinct
in terms of form? What contributes to this distinction? What is more, do shì… de
sentences such as (6a) share the same syntactic and semantic properties as those like
(6b)? If not, what are the differences between them?
Third, shì in (2) retains a trace of the classical demonstrative pronoun, which
supports the argument that the copula shì in Modern Chinese evolved from the
demonstrative pronoun in Old Chinese. However, it is not clear how and why the
demonstrative pronoun changed into a copula verb and where the first occurrences of
copula shì occurred. A few scholars (Pulleyblank 1995; Shi and Li 2001; etc.) claim that
the change underwent a process of grammaticalization (Hopper and Traugott 2003), and
many proposals have been made to account for the process of the change, but the
questions remain unanswered. This thesis seeks to answer them.
11
Finally, after the copula shì emerged, when did it start to signal contrastive focus?
Why and how did it develop this particular function? Did it undergo a process of further
grammaticalization? In relation to this, what were the motivations and mechanisms that
enabled the cleft sentence to emerge?
Attempting to answer the above questions, this thesis examines the structure and
function of the Chinese copular construction within the framework of Construction
Grammar and Constructionalization. Construction Grammar was developed with a view
to provide full and explanatory accounts of broad generalizations as well as specialized
linguistic patterns. Constructionalization is a construction grammar perspective of the
development of constructions over time. Since the structure and use of the copula and its
construction are highly general and schematic, they are well suited to treatment within a
constructional approach.
1.2 An overview of the literature on shì
In this section, I outline the major studies in the literature of Chinese linguistics on the
word shì and its construction. I discuss the studies on the grammatical category of shì and
its origin as well as the studies on the cleft construction and its development.
1.2.1 The grammatical category of shì
There has been a great amount of research on the grammatical category of the word shì.
Ma (1898) takes on the research of shì and considers it to be an anaphoric pronoun that
can refer to an NP or can be demonstrative. Wang (1937) first treats shì as xì cí, a linking
verb, a copula verb, which has become a widely accepted term for shì in Modern
12
Chinese. Following Jespersen (1924), Wang suggests that similar to the English verb ‘to
be,’ the copula shì is colorless, and that it does not encode any meaning by itself. He
treats shì as a xū cí ‘an empty word,’ and any modifiers that precede shì modify the whole
predicate of the sentence, which consists of the copula shì and the post-copula phrase. He
also points out that although shì is meaningless, it has two derived semantic functions:
one is to determine cause; the other is to affirm or deny a proposition. These functions are
derived from the fact that the copula shì is also evaluative, implying pànduàn ‘judgment,’
and accordingly copular sentences indicate judgment or assertion. (Wang 1984 Vol1:
159-163) Wang considers only the shì that precedes a nominal to be the copula, and
believes that the function of shì preceding an adjectival phrase is influenced by the
grammar of the western languages. He suggests that the shì followed by an adjectival or
verbal phrase is not the real copula, but is used to affirm mood. (Wang 1984 Vol2: 475)
Lü (1979) systematically treats shì as a verb regardless of what follows. Its major
function is to link, and to indicate affirmation and judgment. Following Wang, he
considers that the verb shì together with the following element forms the predicate of the
sentence. (Lü 2002 Vol5: 371) However, some Chinese linguists including Ding (1980),
Zhu (1982), Huang and Liao (1991) regard shì as a transitive verb, followed by an object.
Zhu (1982) suggests that the object following the verb shì can be either nominal or
verbal. When shì is followed by a nominal object, it is pronounced neutrally, and the
semantic relation between the subject and the object is equality or member-class. If the
subject is an NP of location, shì denotes existential. When shì precedes a verbal object, it
usually encodes contrast when it is pronounced neutrally, but denotes affirmation when it
is phonetically stressed. (Zhu 1999 Vol1: 120) Chao (1968) also treats the complement of
13
shì as its object thus making shì a transitive verb, although he mentions that the formal
properties are sufficiently different to set it apart from the classificatory verbs. (Chao
1968:716)
(8) a. * 他 是了 学生
tā shì-le xuéshēng
SG3 COP-PERF student
b. * 他 没(有) 是 学生
tā méi(yǒu) shì xuéshēng
SG3 not-have COP xuéshēng
c. *他 有没有 是 学生?
tā yǒuméiyǒu shì xuéshēng
SG3 have-not-have COP student
d. *他 是 一 是 学生
tā shì yí shì xuéshēng
SG3 COP-one-COP student
e. *他 是 三次 学生
tā shì sāncì xuéshēng
SG3 COP three times student
f. *他 是 一天 学生
tā shì yītiān xuéshēng
SG3 COP one day student
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g. *他 [是 学生 的]
tā [shì xuéshēng de]
SG3 [COP student NOM]
h. *他 [是 的] 学生
tā [shì de] xuéshēng
SG3 [COP REL] student
(8) shows that unlike other verbs, shì does not occur with aspect markers, e.g. (8a)
and accordingly cannot be negated by the aspectual negator méi(yǒu) as in (8b). Also, shì
does not allow the yǒuméiyǒu shì (have-not-have V) yes-no questions, e.g. (8c).
Furthermore, unlike other verbs, shì cannot be reduplicated and does not take iterative
and durative adverbials as complements, e.g. (8d-8f). Finally, shì cannot be nominalized
or relativized, e.g. (8g&h). However, shì also shares some properties with other verbs. (9)
shows like other verbs, shì can be negated by the neutral negator bù and allows the V-
not-V yes-no question formation. Modern Chinese has a number of non-inflectional verbs
which have similar syntactic properties as shì shown in (8) and (9) such as the existential
verb zài ‘to be at a location,’ the perception verb rènwéi ‘to think,’ etc.
(9) a. 他 不是 学生
tā búshì xuéshēng
SG3 not COP student
‘He is not a student.’
15
b. 他 是不是 学生?
tā shìbúshì xuéshēng
SG3 COP-not-COP student
‘Is he a student?’
Li and Thompson (1981:147), taking a functional descriptive approach, treat shì as
an intransitive verb and suggest a simple copular sentence typically contains a referential
subject noun phrase linked to a non-referential noun phrase by the copula verb. The verb
phrase of the sentence is composed of the copula and a non-referential noun phrase that is
not an object of the copula verb; and hence the verb phrase of the copular sentence is
intransitive.
As for the fact that shì occurs preceding both nominals and verbals (VP/AP/PP/S3),
many linguists such as Huang (1998); Hu (1979), suggest that the one followed by
nominals is the linking verb, the copula verb, while the one followed by verbals is an
adverb denoting emphatic mood. I will discuss Huang’s (1998) idea in more detail in
Chapter 3.
All the accounts above treat shì as an independent and atomic linguistic form. A
copular sentence is made up of components with their aspects of meaning and form
mapped onto one another by general rules. Thus, these accounts do not consider that the
copula and the schematic copular construction encode aspects of form and meaning by
themselves. This thesis argues that shì is consistently the invariant copula verb in Modern
3 According to Li and Thompson (1981), prepositions are considered as co-verbs in Chinese. Both adjectival phrases (AP) and prepositional phrases (PP) are classified as verbal phrases. S here is the acronym of clause.
16
Chinese and the copular construction is a schematic form and meaning pairing that has
syntactic and semantic properties specific to the construction. I will provide a detailed
discussion on this in Chapter 3.
1.2.2 The origin of the copula shì
Wang (1937) claims the copula shì emerged at the end of the Western Han (202 BCE - 9
CE). Qiu (1979) using the examples such as 是是帚彗shì shì zhòuhuì ‘this COP comet;
this is the comet’ appearing in the then newly excavated texts from the Han tombs of
Mawangdui in Changsha, argues that the copula shì emerged in pre-Qin around the
Warring period (476 BCE- 221 BCE). Although whether these examples can demonstrate
the claim that copula was produced in pre-Qin is controversial, Qiu’s claim is supported
by a majority of Chinese scholars including Guo (1988); Tang (1991); Feng (1993); etc.
Wang (1937) suggests that the copula shì was conventionalized and became
standard around 500 CE. He provides three criteria to determine the copula: 1) it was
modified by adverbs; 2) the decrease of sentence final particle yě that denoted the
copulative semantics in Old Chinese (500 BCE - 200 CE); 3) it was negated by the
neutral negator bù, along with the decrease the occurrences of the Old Chinese nominal
negator fēi. This claim has been widely accepted and scholars generally agree that the
copula shì frequently occurred in Middle Chinese (200 CE -1000).
Since then the origin of the copula shì has been a hot topic among scholars. Three
major proposals have been brought up:
The most widely accepted one is that the copula shì evolved from the demonstrative
pronoun in Old Chinese. This claim is proposed by Wang (1937) and supported by Feng
17
(1993); Pulleyblank (1995); Shi and Li (2001); etc. Wang (1937) argues that in Old
Chinese, the subject was often followed by the demonstrative pronoun shì functioning as
an anaphor referring to the subject. Shì frequently appeared in the position linking the
subject and the predicate and denoting the copulative meaning, which enabled the process
of changing into a copula. Feng (1993) suggests the copula shì originated and developed
from a demonstrative pronominal form from the topic-comment construction (Li and
Thompson 1981) in Old Chinese and hypothesizes that one would expect a pause
between the topic and comment in the topic-comment construction in early Old Chinese.
Feng proposes that the demonstrative pronoun shì evolved into the copula shì because of
the weakening of the function as the demonstrative pronoun and the lack of necessity for
the pause. However, I suggest that there is a problem with postulating a pause in classical
Chinese when we have no spoken data unless there are characters such as 兮xī in the text
indicating interjection. Moreover, the lack of necessity for the pause that weakened the
emphatic function of the demonstrative pronoun did not necessarily change the
demonstrative pronoun into a verb.
Shi and Li (2001), in light of the theory of grammaticalization, argue that copula shì
evolving from the demonstrative pronoun underwent a process of analogy, modeling
regular transitive verbs in Old Chinese. They claim, following Kiparsky (1992), that the
holistic structural property of a language at a certain period brings about
grammaticalization through a process of analogy. They suggest that Old Chinese had
already developed standard SVO word order, and the frequent occurrence of [NP shì NP]
is the morphosyntactic context in which shì was influenced by and fitted into the extant
transitive verb pattern. However, it is obvious that the copula shì in Modern Chinese
18
differs from the standard transitive verbs in some syntactically significant ways; if it
underwent the analogical process modeling SVO structure, then why didn’t it develop
into a full-fledged transitive verb?
The second proposal is suggested by Hong (1958) who challenges Wang’s theory
and proposes that the copula shì evolved from the adjective shì, which functions to affirm
a proposition. Feng (1992) believes that the copula shì originated from the adjective shì
in Old Chinese that meant ‘real’ and ‘actual.’ The affirmative meaning denoted in the
adjective shì was semantically related to the copula and was the main motivation that
enabled the change to occur. However, this proposal does not account for the syntactic
change of shì, nor does it explain how the meaning of ‘real’ or ‘actual’ changed into
copulative meanings.
The third proposal is by Yen (1986) who further develops Hong (1958)’s theory and
suggests that the use of shì as a copula came from the function as an affirmative particle.
Because of the contrastive meanings of fēi ‘wrong’ and shì ‘right,’ speakers started to use
shì as an affirmative particle in an affirmative sentence to be in direct contrast with a
corresponding negative sentence where the nominal negator fēi appeared. According to
Yen, fēi was replaced by bú shì ‘NEG shì’ later on. However, there is no evidence to
show that fēi was replaced by bú shì. Bù in Old Chinese was used to negate verbs, VP and
predicates, as in bù zhī ‘not know,’ bú wéi ‘not do,’ etc. Therefore, bù occurring
preceding shì provides evidence that shì was part of the predicate.
None of the three proposals above considers the semantic relatedness between the
original item and the target outcome, nor the morphosyntactic contexts in which new
meaning can be seen and enabled to occur. Moreover, none of them considers the change
19
of shì in terms of a construction as a form and meaning pairing. This thesis, however
argues, from the perspective of constructionalization, that the constructionalization of shì
is part of the development of a schematic copular construction. I argue that the copular
construction emerged out of the topic-comment construction in Old Chinese where shì
was a demonstrative pronoun occurring at the subject position of the comment clause
functioning as an anaphor referring to the previous topic phrase (NP/VP/S). I propose the
grammatical constructionalization of the copular construction is the result of reanalysis of
the topic-comment construction along with a process of analogization, modeling after the
construction of the Old Chinese verb wéi ‘to be.’ The change was gradual consisting of
successive micro-changes. A detailed analysis on the process of the constructionalization
will be provided in Chapter 4.
1.2.3 The previous research on Chinese cleft sentences
Quirk et al (1985) defines a cleft sentence as a complex sentence in which a simple
sentence is expressed using a main clause and a subordinate clause. Traditionally, the
English cleft includes it-cleft, and pseudo-cleft (WH-/ALL/TH-cleft).
Many scholars (Fang 1995; Huang and Fawcett 1996; Teng 1979; Tang 1988; etc.)
hold that Chinese shì…de sentences share similar semantic and structural properties with
the English cleft sentences, and hence they are termed cleft sentences as well. These
scholars accept that Chinese cleft sentences involve a presupposition and a contrastive
focus. Examples (6a&b), repeated here as (10a&b) are cleft sentences in which the post-
copula element encodes the contrastive focus:
20
(10) a. 蛋糕 是 昨天 做 的
dàngāo shì zuótiān zuò de
cake COP yesterday make NOM
‘It was yesterday that the cake was made.’
b. 我 是 去年 来 美国 的
wǒ shì qùnián lái měiguó de
SG1 COP last year come US NOM
‘It was last year that I came to the US.’
Many scholars e.g. Teng 1979; Zhu 1997; Huang 1998, distinguish the cleft
(equivalent to English it-cleft. Hereafter, I use the term “cleft” to be equivalent to English
it-cleft) such as (10b) from the so-called pseudo-cleft such as (10a), because they believe
there is a semantic distinction between them. They maintain that the cleft such as (10b) is
not reversible, whereas the pseudo-cleft indicates equation and therefore is reversible.
They believe that example (11) is the reversed version of (10a) and that (10a) and (11)
have identical meaning and they are pseudo-cleft sentences:
(11) 昨天 做 的 是 蛋糕
zuótiān zuò de shì dàngāo
yesterday make NOM COP cake
‘What was made yesterday is the cake.’
The term “pseudo-cleft” in the English linguistic literature is used to account for
wh-/the one/all sentences that are structurally distinct from the it-cleft although they both
21
involve two clauses: a relative clause and a copular clause. The pseudo-cleft and it-cleft
in English share similar semantic and pragmatic indications, including exhaustiveness
and exclusiveness (Prince 1978; Higgins 1979; Quirk et al. 1985; etc.), and
specificational member-class relationship (Patten 2010).
I suggest that examples like (11) can be considered as a pseudo-cleft in Modern
Chinese, and the post-copula element in (11) ‘the cake’ also encodes contrastiveness. In
Chapter 3, I argue that (10a) is not a pseudo-cleft, but a cleft like (10b), because it has the
form [NP COP NOM] (NOM=(ADV/PP/TP) NP/VP/S de). All cleft sentences are
specificational, not equational, and cannot be reversed. Within the constructional
framework, I propose that the cleft construction is schematic and has the form [NP COP
NOM] and the meaning of specificational plus contrastive. The pseudo-cleft such as (11)
does not have the form [NP COP NOM] and it is not the focus of this thesis. Details on
the Chinese cleft construction are provided in Chapter 3.
As for the structure of the Chinese cleft, there has been an extensive debate between
two proposals: complex predication analysis and simplex predication analysis. The
proposal of complex predication analysis involves a dichotomy: one is held by
Hashimoto (1969); Tang (1983); Ross (1983); Tsao (1990); Lü (1979); Chao (1968); etc,
the other is proposed by Li and Thompson (1981); Zhu (1985); etc. Hashimoto (1969)
argues that the deep structure of (10b) is:
[NP [V VP ]vp PTCL]s
[wǒ [shì qùnián lái měiguó]vp de]s
[I [COP last year come to the US]vp PTCL]s
22
For Hashimoto, the predicate of (10b) is complex as it consists of a serial verb
construction, and the sentence final de is a particle that is independent of the predicate.
Li and Thompson (1981) suggest the cleft is a special copular sentence in which a
nominalization is used, in which a nominalization equals (ADV/TP/PP) NP/VP/S plus the
nominalizer de. Structurally, it consists of a subject and the copula verb shì followed by a
nominalization, schematized as:
[NP [V TP V NP NOM ]vp ]s
[wǒ [shì qùnián lái měiguó de ]vp ]s
[I [COP last year come to the US NOM]vp ]s
For Li and Thompson, the sentence final de is a nominalizer that is part of the
predicate, whereas Hashimoto claimed de was a particle that is not part of the predicate.
Simplex predication analysis is supported by Teng (1979), Huang (1998), Zhang
and Fang (2001), Zhu (1997), Choi (2006), etc. Their analysis suggests shì is not a copula
verb, but a focus marker that is placed preceding the focused constituent like a phonetic
spellout of the focus. Huang (1998) treats shì as a focus operator (FO) having the status
of an adverb and not part of the predicate. According to him, (10b) can be schematized as:
[NP [ADV VP ]vp PTCL]s
[wǒ [shì qùnián lái měiguó]vp de]s
[I [FO last year come to the US]vp PTCL]s
23
Example (6c), repeated here as (12), also treated as a cleft sentence, is taken by
Huang (1998) as evidence to support the simplex predication analysis.
(12) 我 是 去年 来 美国
wǒ shì qùniān lái měiguó
SG1 FO last year come US
‘It was last year that I came to the US.’
Huang believes example (12) is (10b) with the final particle de omitted. It is a
simplex clause with wǒ ‘I’ as the subject followed by the VO predicate lái měiguó ‘come
to the US’ that is modified by the adverbial focus operator marking the adverbial time
phrase as the contrastive focus.
The debate between the above proposals essentially lies in the syntactic status of shì
and de: Hashimoto (1969), Li and Thompson (1981); etc. suggest shì is a copula verb,
whereas Huang (1998); etc. claim shì is an adverb in (10b) and (12). Hashimoto; Huang;
etc, treat de as sentence final particle, whereas Li and Thompson treat de as a
nominalizer.4 Many linguists (Teng 1979; Ross 1983; Chiu 1993; Hsieh 1998; etc.) agree
that sentence final de in the cleft can be optionally omitted.
In this thesis, I argue that shì is consistently a copula verb in Modern Chinese and
following Li and Thompson (1981) I suggest the cleft construction has the structure
consisting of a subject and the copula verb shì followed by a nominalization marked by
the nominalizer de. Taking Construction Grammar as the given framework, I suggest that
4 Some scholars such as Shi (1994), Hsieh (1998) claim that the final de in cleft sentences is a perfective aspectual marker equivalent to the perfective marker le.
24
the cleft construction is a form and meaning pairing, with the form [NP COP NOM] and
the specificational meaning with contrastive focus. The cleft construction is a subschema
of the more schematic copular construction. In addition, it indicates an assertion with a
presupposition asserted by a contrastive focus indicated by the copula shì. The cleft
construction has two subschemas: cleft-obj like (10a) and cleft-sbj such as (10b). For the
cleft-obj, the subject of the sentence is semantically co-referential with the object of the
nominalization, and the final nominalizer de is obligatory; whereas in the cleft-sbj, the
subject of the sentence is semantically co-referential with the subject of the
nominalization and the nominalizer de is optional. A detailed account of my analysis
along with Huang’s (1998) argument and my counter-argument to his analysis will be
presented in Chapter 3.
1.2.4 The development of the Chinese cleft
Compared to the abundant literature on the grammatical status of shì and the structure of
the cleft, accounts of the development of the cleft are rarely found.
Rather than targeting the emergence of the cleft as the emergence of a construction,
some scholars focus on the development of shì as a focus marker. Shi and Li (2001)
suggest diachronically the focus marker shì as a particle emerged from the copula shì in
Middle Chinese around 500 CE. They argue that the copula shì was further
grammaticalized into a focus marker when it frequently occurred preceding and marking
the interrogative wh-words as focus. They assume that around the same period of time,
shì as the marker of a wh-word expanded to mark other categorical elements, e.g. NP, VP.
This thesis argues that around 500 CE the copular construction was entrenched and
25
conventionalized, and the word shì started to function in marking the following wh-words
as focus. However, there is no evidence around 500 CE showing shì expanded the focus
marking function from wh-words to others such as NPs, VPs. I will show that the
examples that Shi and Li find from 500 CE texts to support their claim are simply
ordinary copular sentences encoding copulative linking meanings. Therefore, Shi and
Li’s claim that the copula shì further grammaticalized into a focus marker around 500 CE
is problematic. I argue that it is the cleft construction as a whole that marks the
immediate post-copula element as contrastive focus, and that only along with the
emergence of the cleft construction did shì start signaling contrastive focus. This process
took place around 900 CE.
Shen (2008:387) gives a synchronic analysis of the formation of the cleft.
Following the cognitive linguistic approach theorized by Fauconnier and Turner (2003),
Shen claims that the cleft is generated through analogy and compounding, particularly
through a process that he calls “analogical blending.” The sentence “belongs to a
sentence pattern with its own constructional meaning of ‘subjective identity’ that is an
emergent meaning as a result of conceptual blending.” He focuses on the cleft such as
(13):
(13) 他 是 昨天 出 的 医院 (的)
tā shì zuótiān chū de yīyuàn (de)
SG3 COP yesterday leave REL hospital (NOM)
‘It was yesterday that he left the hospital.’
Shen suggests that example (13) is derived from the analogical process in (14):
26
(14) a. 这 是 昨天 出 的 病人
zhè shì zuótiān chū de bìngrén
this COP yesterday leave REL patient
‘This is the patient that left yesterday.’
b. 他 是 昨天 出 的 病人
tā shì zuótiān chū de bìngrén
SG3 COP yesterday leave REL patient
‘He is the patient that left yesterday.’
x. 这 是 昨天 出 的 医院 y. (13)
zhè shì zuótiān chū de yīyuàn
this COP yesterday leave REL hospital
‘This is the hospital that (he) left yesterday.’
In (14), b. and x. derive from a. through a process of analogy5, and y., representing
(13), is generated through the blending of b. and x. Therefore, (13) is derived through the
process of “analogical blending.” This results in a structure in which tā is the subject, shì
is the copula verb, yīyuàn ‘the hospital’ is the noun predicate, and zuótiān chū de is a
modifying clause (or relative clause) modifying yīyuàn. Shen points out that the
motivation of “analogical blending” is that the speaker wants to convey some new
meaning. As for the particular structure of (13), the motivation is that the speaker wants
to express the subjective recognition. It is a way to show the speaker’s empathy with the
hearer.
5Shen does not explain how b. and x. derive through analogy. One reason could be that the demonstrative zhè in a. and the pronoun in b. share definiteness, and bìngrén in a. and yīyuàn in x. are both regular nouns.
27
Although the pragmatic implicature of conveying new meaning is relevant in
enabling a new construction, Shen’s analysis is problematic because he only covers one
subtype of the cleft in which the post-copula predicate is an NP modified by a relative
clause, with the nominalizer de optional in an ad hoc fashion. This thesis provides a
diachronic analysis on the formation and development of the cleft construction in the
framework of constructionalization. I propose that the cleft construction [NPi COP
NOMj][SEMi specificational+contrastive SEMj] evolved out of the conventionalized
prototype of the specificational copular construction [NPi shì NPj][SEMi
specificational SEMj] and the constructionalization process involved host-class
expansion, syntactic expansion (recruiting nominalization into the predicate position),
and semantic and pragmatic expansion. The development again involved successive
micro-steps and therefore was gradual. I suggest that the emergent cleft construction
marked the immediate post-copula element as contrastive focus that is signaled by the
copula shì. I will discuss the constructionalization process in detail in Chapter 5.
1.3 Data and methodology
This thesis examines the Chinese copular configuration from both a synchronic and a
diachronic perspective. My analysis basically consists of theoretical discussions on the
topics that I have mentioned above and synchronic and diachronic tests on them. In the
part on the synchronic theoretical discussion, I rely largely on examples that are either
constructed or taken from the literature. I have chosen to exemplify my discussion in this
way because the best way to illustrate the theoretical notions or concepts is to give
28
prototypical examples. However, since the issues surrounding the data are often complex,
I keep examples brief and choose examples that highlight the relevant features without
requiring unnecessary explication. In this part of the thesis, the focus of my discussion is
on prototypical copular sentences and cleft sentences.
In the part on the examination of the synchronic distribution and historical
development of the copular and cleft construction, I undertake a corpus-based study and
make use of data from the searchable Internet version of the CCL Chinese Corpus6
created and managed by Peking University. CCL was built in 2009 and includes data
both in Modern Chinese and Classical Chinese. I use these data both to elucidate my
discussion and to provide qualitative and quantitative evidence of synchronic distribution
and diachronic change. My synchronic analysis informs my diachronic investigation and,
in turn, the diachronic evidence is used to support my synchronic account of the copular
construction.
The CCL Modern Chinese corpus consists of selective texts from 10 contemporary
literary categories including newspaper journals, historical biographies, movies and TV
dramas, translation works, Internet articles, dramas, institutional articles and literature
works. It covers a variety of literary genres, from casual spoken language in movies and
TV dramas to formal institutional articles. The corpus is primarily written language and
the casual spoken language only takes a very small portion (259,506 tokens) about
0.0356% in the corpus. It includes 728,909,261 tokens in total and contains 3,291,508
tokens of shì, which ranks the third most frequent token within the corpus next to de
(11,523,375) and yī (4,140,344). The high frequency of shì shows the importance of the
6 http://ccl.pku.edu.cn:8080/ccl_corpus/index.jsp
29
usage of shì in Chinese and the significance of the research on how this particular
occurrence is used and processed by Chinese speakers and writers.
The CCL Classical Chinese corpus contains a list of Chinese texts from the East
Zhou Dynasty (Spring and Autumn and Warring states periods) (around 500 BCE) to
Republic of China (1911 or so), covering 1059 texts including standard records of history
issued by royal family, historical narrations and their commentaries, collective quotes
from Masters of a Hundred Lineages, poems and prose, Buddhist and Daoist texts, drama,
short stories and philosophy notes. It includes 417,234,865 tokens in total and more than
414,984 tokens of shì, of which approximately 0.18% (about 7,733 tokens) are found in
Old Chinese. As for the periodization of Chinese language, I follow Sun (1996): Old
Chinese (500 BCE-200 CE), Middle Chinese (200 CE-1000), Early Chinese (1001-1900),
and Modern Chinese (1900-present).
1.4 An outline of the structure of the thesis
In the present chapter, I have sketched a brief overview of the issues that this thesis
addresses, provided some introductory background material and summarized the main
arguments that I propose.
In the following chapter, I lay out the theoretical models of Construction Grammar
and Constructionalization, the frameworks that I make use of in my account and the
theoretical assumptions on which the rest of the thesis is based.
My analysis begins in Chapter 3 with the concepts of “copula” and “cleft.” I
propose that shì is the systematic invariant copula verb in Modern Chinese. According to
30
Construction Grammar, a copular construction is a form and meaning pair that entails a
proposition with the semantics of specificational or predicational. I suggest that the
Chinese cleft construction denotes the specificational plus contrastive meaning. The cleft
construction, indicating a contrastive focus, can be schematized as [NPi COP
NOMj][SEMi specificational+contrastive SEMj].
In Chapter 4, I examine the historical development of the copular construction. I
show that from the perspective of Constructionalization, the topic-comment structure
with shì occurring at the initial position of the comment emerged in Old Chinese, and can
be said to have been reanalyzed as a subject-predicate construction via analogization to
the structure and meaning of the Old Chinese verb wéi ‘to be’. The chapter focuses on the
two conditions in which constructionalization tends to take place: 1) the semantic
relatedness between the original construction and the target outcome; 2) the
morphosyntactic contexts in which the change was enabled. I argue that the process of
demonstrative pronoun shì changing into a copula presents its functional change from
discourse anaphoric function to syntactic linking function, which also gives rise to the
decrease of the instances of the classical copular sentences.7
Chapter 5 comprises a historical investigation into the cleft construction. I make use
of historical evidence to provide an explanation for the idiosyncratic characteristics of the
cleft. As the copular construction was entrenched and conventionalized in early Middle
Chinese, the cleft construction emerged through host-class expansion (recruiting
nominalization at the predicate position), and semantic and pragmatic expansion, where it
became more general/schematic and more productive and less compositional.
7 It is generally believed that copular sentences in Old Chinese did not contain any copula verbs and the copulative indication was encoded in the sentence final declarative particle yě.
31
A summary of the thesis is given in chapter 6 along with my final conclusions and
thoughts for future studies.
32
Chapter 2 Construction Grammar and Constructionalization In this chapter, I introduce the principles and concepts that are specific to a constructional
theory of grammar and a constructional approach to language change. The purpose of this
chapter is to outline some of the basic assumptions that underlie this thesis and to explain
the theoretical framework that I make use of in the analysis of the Chinese copular
constructions. This chapter provides historical background on how the theory of
construction grammar was developed and an outline of three constructional approaches to
language. I explain the principles behind the different approaches, and draw on a number
of insights and theoretical assumptions that are shared by most construction grammar
models. I am also concerned with the nature of changes in constructions and present the
framework of constructionalization, a construction grammar perspective of the
development on constructions over time.
2.1 Construction Grammar
2.1.1 Construction grammar as opposed to modular models Construction grammar was first developed to account for idiomatic cases in the speaker’s
knowledge of a grammar of their language that intrinsically went beyond the capacity of
generative grammar. It grew as an alternative to the modular (also called componential)
33
model of linguistic patterns proposed by theories of generative grammar from the 1960s
to at least the 1980s. In a modular model, each component describes one dimension of the
properties of a sentence and each type of linguistic knowledge. In other words, the
general principle of a modular model is that “each component governs linguistic
properties of a single type: sound, word structure, syntax, meaning, use.” (Croft and
Cruse 2004: 226). The components are intended to be highly general rules that apply to
all structures of the relevant type, e.g. the rules of the syntactic component apply to all
sentences and sentence types, and the same applies to rules for other components. One
component is mapped onto another by general linking rules. For this model, lexical items
are the only idiosyncratic and item-specific mappings between the components, and there
are no idiosyncratic properties of grammatical structures larger than a single word.
Phrases and sentences are governed by the general rules of the syntactic component,
semantic and phonological components, plus the highly general linking rules.
Constructions do not have theoretical status in this model; they are purely byproducts of
componential meaning and general rules of the grammar that are usually conceived of as
constituents or phrases.
For example, (1) is a prototypical copular sentence in Modern Chinese. In a
modular model, the Chinese copular construction is a string of item-specific components.
Example (1) consists of three components: NP1 wǒ ‘I,’ the copula shì and NP2 xuéshēng
‘student, ’ and they are put together in the string by the general linking rule which in this
case is that the copula must be followed by a predicate.
34
(1) 我 是 学生
wǒ shì xuéshēng
SG1 COP student
‘I am a student.’
The modular model of grammar is consistent with the generative theory that syntax
can be studied independently from meaning and other aspects of function, such as
pragmatics and discourse function. Within generative grammar, constructions are simply
syntactic configurations (strings); the fact that constructions may encode non-
componential meaning is either not recognized or is considered to be outside of the scope
of the “core” phenomena. (Patten 2010: 27) Therefore, within this model, the meanings
of the three components in (1) are considered individually and mapped onto each other by
general rules, but the meaning of them together as a whole is not considered.
However, the syntactic properties of idioms raise a great problem for the modular
model of grammar. “Idioms are, by definition, grammatical units larger than a word
which are idiosyncratic in some respect.” (Croft and Cruse 2004: 230) Idioms involve the
feature of conventionality, i.e. “their meaning or use cannot be predicted, or at least
entirely predicted, on the basis of a knowledge of the independent conventions that
determine the use of their constituents when they appear in isolation from one another.”
(Nunberg, Sag and Wasow 1994: 492) The fact that some aspects of an idiom cannot be
predicted by the general rules of the syntactic and semantic components and their linking
rules poses a problem for the modular model. The linguists who proposed the original
construction grammar, e.g. Fillmore, Kay and O’Connor (1988), aimed at the problem of
idioms, and their analysis became the basis for a new grammatical framework.
35
Construction grammar treats all aspects of language as the proper objects of
linguistic study, and there is neither “core” nor “periphery” knowledge. In this
framework, constructions are symbolic form-meaning pairings, just like lexical items that
encode idiosyncratic grammatical and semantic properties. The form-meaning mapping is
represented as internal to the construction, as opposed to modular models, in which
general linking rules map separate components of linguistic knowledge onto one another.
Not only syntax, all aspects of linguistic meaning, including semantics, pragmatics, and
discourse function are required for a full account of grammatical knowledge. The model
of construction grammar therefore assumes construction specific properties that are
irrelevant to the general mapping patterns.
For Croft (2001) and Goldberg (2006), constructions are not only those with
idiosyncratic properties, but also include the compositional strings that occur with
sufficient frequency. Therefore, in the construction grammar model, (1) is an example of
the copular construction, which has the form [NP COP NP] and the meaning that ‘a
teacher’ is a property to characterize the subject ‘he.’ Both the form and meaning are
internal and specific to the construction.
2.1.2 Three major constructional approaches There are a number of different approaches that have been proposed with a constructional
perspective on language. Overviews of these approaches can also be founded in Croft and
Cruse (2004); Fried and Östman (2004); Langacker (2005); Goldberg (2006); Traugott
and Trousdale (2011); etc. The following discussion on constructional approaches is
based on Traugott and Trousdale (2011).
36
Goldberg (Forthcoming) identifies four principles shared by all constructional
approaches to language, and one principle (e) shared by most such approaches.
a) The construction is the basic unit of grammar. A construction is a conventional
form and meaning pairing. (Lakoff 1987; Fillmore, Kay and O’Connor 1988;
Goldberg 1995, 2006; etc.)
b) Both form and meaning are internal to construction with semantic structure
directly mapped on to surface syntactic structure, without derivations. (Goldberg
2002; Culicover and Jackendoff 2005)
c) Inheritance hierarchies are the forms that connect and associate constructions into
a network of language. (Langacker 1987; Hudson 1990, 2007; etc.)
d) Cross-linguistic (and dialectal) variation can be accounted for either by “domain-
general cognitive process” (Goldberg forthcoming) or by variety-specific
constructions (Croft 2001; Haspelmath 2008; etc.).
e) Language structure is shaped by language use (Barlow and Kemmer 2000; Bybee
2010; etc.)
Traugott and Trousdale (2011) distinguish three constructional models by referring
to them as: Berkeley Construction Grammar, Cognitive Construction grammar, and
Radical Construction Grammar. All the three approaches share the first four principles
above. Berkeley Construction Grammar theorized by Fillmore and his colleagues,
initially focused on idiosyncratic idioms and expressions by suggesting, “the same
analytic tools account for both most basic structures and these ‘special patterns’”
37
(Fillmore, forthcoming). This approach closely resembles certain formalist theories, in
particular Head driven Phrase Structure Grammar, from which a sign-based theory (Sag
2012) is derived. The model takes on syntactic relations and inheritance hierarchies as
well; the argument structure is syntactic as well as semantic.
Cognitive Construction Grammar as developed by Goldberg, originally focused on
argument structure constructions, such as the English ditransitive constructions, e.g. ‘I
gave/sent him a book’, and the way-construction, e.g. ‘He elbowed his way through the
crowd’. The argument structure for Goldberg (1995:72) is construed as semantic but
linked to syntax. In her 1995 model, she focuses on the patterns that are not predictable
from their component parts and defines constructions as pairings of form and meaning
where some aspect of the from, or some aspect of the meaning, is not derivable from
either the combination of component parts, or from other pre-existing constructions.
(Goldberg 1995:4) In her 2006 book, Goldberg expands the scope of construction to the
compositional strings that “are stored as constructions even if they are fully predictable,
as long as they occur with sufficient frequency.” (Goldberg 2006:5) That is, constructions
are of any shape, from complex clauses to lexical items, to inflectional affixes; “the
network of constructions captures our grammatical knowledge of language in toto, i.e.
it’s constructions all the way down” (Goldberg 2006: 18, italics and emphasis original).
This model of construction grammar is a usage-based framework, which claims that
language is shaped by use, all grammatical knowledge is learned inductively from the
input and constructions are “learned pairings of form with semantic or discourse
function.” (Goldberg 2006:5)
38
According to Croft’s Radical Construction Grammar, “a construction is an
entrenched routine ‘unit,’ that is generally used in the speech community ‘conventional,’
and involves a pairing of form and meaning ‘symbolic.’” (Croft 2005:274). This
constructional model accounts for typological variation in a construction grammar
framework. It also adopts the usage-based approach and takes a thoroughly non-
reductionist approach to constructions by rejecting autonomous syntactic relations
between elements in a construction.
It takes constructions as the basic or primitive elements of syntactic representation
and categories are defined in terms of the constructions they occur in. For example, the
components of the intransitive construction are defined as intransitive subject and
intransitive verb (Vi), whose categories are defined as those words or phrases that occur
in the relevant role in the particular construction. Vi is a category in the intransitive
construction in English, not in UG. It also “highlights the taxonomic nature of
constructional knowledge, the inheritance relationship between more general and more
specific constructions, and the importance of language use in determining aspects of
language structure.” (Traugott and Trousdale, 2011) Croft (2001) proposes that the form
and conventional meaning of each construction are related by symbolic links that are
internal to the construction. Thus, each complex construction contains units of form-
meaning pairings. In addition to the internal link connecting individual elements to their
conventional meanings, there is an additional symbolic link that relates the entirety of the
construction’s form to the construction’s conventional meaning. Consequently, even a
complex construction is itself a symbolic unit, a linguistic sign. Croft (2001: 18)
represents the symbolic structure of a construction given in Figure 2.1.
39
Figure 2.1 Model of the symbolic structure of a construction in Radical Construction
Grammar (Croft 2001: 18; Croft and Cruse 2004:258)
As shown in Figure 2.1, the construction’s formal characteristics are made up of
syntactic, morphological and phonological properties, while its conventional meaning
comprises semantic, pragmatic and discourse-functional properties. Radical Construction
Grammar was originally conceived with language change in mind and its principles can
be usefully integrated into the theory of constructionaliztion.
This thesis adopts the principles that are shared by the above three constructional
accounts, and is most compatible with the views of Cognitive Construction Grammar and
Radical Construction Grammar (I will discuss the formalism in the next section). I treat
the Chinese copular construction as a form and meaning pairing with both semantics and
syntactic structure internal to the construction. For illustration of the construction, I adopt
Croft’s model of the symbolic structure of a construction in Radical Construction
Grammar as in Figure 2.1, as well as Booij’s (2010) schematization. Booij’s illustration
of construction develops out of Croft’s. Instead of using a box, he illustrates a
construction in a formula in which form and meaning are presented in brackets connected
40
by a two-direction arrow. The schematic formula for a construction is: [FORM]
[SEM (MEANING)]. In this thesis, I use this formula to illustrate Chinese copular
construction as well as its subschemas.
2.1.3 Some relevant concepts of Construction Grammar
In this section, I introduce the relevant concepts and formalisms that are crucial to the
thesis.
2.1.3.1 Taxonomy and inheritance
Construction grammar is an inventory of constructions including words, morphemes,
morphological structures, syntactic constructions, etc., but they are not merely an
unstructured list in construction grammar. Rather, constructions form a structured
inventory of a speaker’s knowledge of the conventions of their language (Langacker
1987, 63-76). Croft (2001) refers to the structured inventory in terms of a taxonomic
network of constructions with each construction constituting a node. Any construction
with unique, idiosyncratic morphological, syntactic, lexical, semantic, pragmatic, or
discourse-functional properties must be represented as an independent node in the
constructional network in order to capture a speaker’s knowledge of their language. For
example, the substantive idiom [sbj kick the bucket] must be represented as an
independent node because it is semantically idiosyncratic. The more schematic but verb-
specific construction [sbj KICK obj] must also be represented as an independent node in
order to specify its argument linking pattern. Finally, the wholly schematic construction
[sbj Vt obj] is represented as an independent node because this is how construction
41
grammar represents the transitive clause (Croft 2001:25). Figure 2.2 shows an example
of the taxonomic hierarchy of clause types.
Figure 2.2: An example of the taxonomic hierarchy of construction
As it shows in Figure 2.2, the taxonomic network is hierarchical, in which some
constructions are more schematic or general than others and lower level less schematic
constructions inherit attributes from higher-level more schematic constructions. Both
Cognitive Construction Grammar and Radical Construction Grammar suggest that the
attributes of a dominating higher-level construction are inherited by the lower-level
construction, but they also maintain that conflict between constructions from different
schematic levels is permitted. When the information specified in inheriting constructions
has a conflict with the information specified in more schematic constructions, “the more
specific construction ‘wins out’ and inheritance is limited to only non-conflicting
information.” (Patten 2010:32) That is to say, partial generalizations are recognized and
allowed in constructional inheritance. That is: each constructional category contains some
SbjVtObj
SbjKICKObj
SbjkickObj Sbjkickthebucket
SbjotherVtObj
schemasubschemamicro‐construction
42
constructions that are “better” (or more motivated) members, and they are the prototype
of the constructional category; and it also contains non-prototypical members which
inherit less attributes from higher-level constructions and extend from the prototype. For
example, in Figure 2.2, a token of the micro-construction such as ‘he kicked the rabbit’
inherits more attributes of the subschema ‘sbj KICK obj’ and the schema ‘sbj Vt obj,’
than the token of the micro-construction ‘he kicked the bucket.’ Therefore ‘he kicked the
rabbit’ is a more motivated member, the prototype of the construction; whereas ‘he
kicked the bucket’ is an extension from the prototype, and it is a non-prototypical
member. “As prototypical and non-prototypical instances coexist, the speaker forms an
inductive generalization (or abstraction) that stipulates only those characteristics that are
shared by all of its members.” (Patten 2010:33)
This thesis places the Chinese copular construction in the higher-level schematic
node in a constructional taxonomy and I argue that constructions including the cleft
construction are subschemas that inherit the attributes of the copular construction. I argue
the copular construction contains the prototypical instances that inherits the most
information and attributes from the schematic construction, as well as non-prototypical
ones that override inheritance from the overarching construction. (See Chapter 3 section
3.4 for details)
2.1.3.2 Coercion
As is shown in the previous subsection, a constructional category contains prototypical
members as well as non-prototypical ones. However, constructions as symbolic form-
meaning pairs may be extended to accommodate non-prototypical items. That is to say,
43
although non-prototypical members of a constructional category are not as good and
motivated as the prototypical members, they must still inherit some information and
interpretation from the schematic higher-level construction. Michaelis (2003: 263) adopts
the term ‘coercion’ for “the enriched interpretations that result from this procedure,” and
restricts it to enrichment of lexical elements by grammatical ones. In Construction
Grammar, inheritance together with the symbolic nature of the construction account for
coercion to take place. If conflicts occur between the construction’s entrenched meaning
and the meaning typically associated with a designated lexical item, then the
constructional requirements coerce the lexical item to conform to them. In this case, the
construction as a whole overcomes the designated lexical meaning of the word. Goldberg
(1995: 158) identifies the conflicts in examples of the English caused-motion
construction between the meaning of the verb and the information designated by the
construction. She notes that in examples like ‘Joe kicked the dog into the bathroom’,
motion is coded by the verb ‘kick’ and the preposition ‘into.’ However, in examples such
as ‘Sam squeezed the rubber ball inside the jar’ and ‘Sam urged Bill outside of the
house,’ “neither the verbs ‘squeeze’ or ‘urge’ nor the prepositions ‘inside’ or ‘outside’
independently code motion” (Goldberg 1995: 158), rather, the caused-motion
construction coerces the “locative term into a directional reading” (Goldberg 1995: 159).
In this case, the construction’s conventional meaning overrides the meanings associated
with its components when they are used independently outside of the construction.
Goldberg (1995: 159) comments, “In order for coercion to be possible, there needs to be
a relationship between the inherent meaning of the lexical items and the coerced
interpretation.” For example, the relationship between the locative prepositional meaning
44
and the constructional meaning of direction in the caused-motion construction is
straightforward; the location given by the preposition is interpreted as the “endpoint of a
path to that location” (Goldberg 1995: 159).
This thesis adopts Goldberg (1995)’s idea of coercion and argues that throughout its
history the Chinese copular construction is a form and meaning pair that indicates a non-
transitory state or situation. The construction contains prototypical members as in [NPi
COP NPj][SEMi copulative linking SEMj] like (1) and non-prototypical members
such as those involving a verbal phrase or clause appearing in the subject or predicate
position, as in (2) in which the verbal phrase zhǐ pǎo-le yī quān ‘run-PERF one lap’
appears in the predicate position. However, even if the verbal phrase or the clause is
aspectually inflected, the copular sentence still denotes a non-transitory state or situation
rather than a transitory temporal process. The constructional interpretation overrides what
it designates for an aspectually inflected verbal phrase or clause. Coercion occurs at the
schema level. (See Chapter 3 section 3.4 for details)
(2) 她 的 遗憾 是 只 跑了 一 圈
tā de yíhàn shì zhǐ pǎo-le yī quān
SG3 ASSOC regret COP only run-PERF one lap
‘Her regret is that she has only run one lap.’
2.1.3.3 A usage-based model
As I have shown in 2.1.2, both Cognitive Construction Grammar and Radical
Construction Grammar share that language structure is shaped by language use. Two
basic concepts within the usage-based model are the concepts of type frequency and
45
token frequency. A construction is high in type frequency if it is instantiated by many
lexemes, i.e. if it occurs with many different lexical items, and low in type frequency if it
only occurs with a few lexical items. Thus, the entrenchment of a more abstract (or more
general) schema in the speaker’s inventory is a function of type frequency. On the other
hand, a construction is high in token frequency if it is instantiated many times by the
same lexical item, and low in token frequency if the construction, together with the
lexical item, is infrequent in use. Entrenchment is a consequence of high frequency,
either of types or of tokens.
Productivity is assumed to be a consequence of a construction’s high type
frequency. The more general a construction is and the more lexical items that instantiate
it, the more productive it is, and thus, the more likely it is that the construction attracts
new items and that it spreads to other existing items that otherwise fulfill the relevant
criteria for occurrence in that particular construction (Bybee 1985, 1995; Goldberg 1995).
Highly entrenched schematic constructions are productive since their type frequency is
high. However, high token frequency of an instance does not mean high type frequency
and does not contribute to the overall productivity of a schematic construction. Instead, it
is only the token that is entrenched, as an independent unit in its own form, and not the
higher-level schematic construction.
An important advantage to a usage-based theory of Construction Grammar is that it
is able to intersect with and work alongside theories of language change. Changes to the
tokens of the micro-construction of the constructional category may have consequences
for the higher-level schematic construction in the taxonomy. This type of constructional
change that leads to the creation and recruitment of the new constructions and the
46
reconfiguration of the existing ones proceeds upwards throughout the hierarchical
taxonomy. This thesis argues the new occurrence of the cleft construction entered into the
schematic specificational copular construction, and therefore gave rise to the increased
schematicity of the super schematic copular construction.
A usage-based constructional approach therefore predicts that there are two
different types of constructional change: one that is brought about by type frequency and
the other that is dependent upon token frequency. Both the two changes involve the
process of conventionalization and entrenchment of the schemas. From a constructional
perspective of language change, these two different types of frequency are important
contributors to the process of constructionalization. Barðdal (2008:176) suggests that low
token frequency is associated with analogy and is an important factor for speakers when
they extend lower-level constructions, whereas high type frequency is “an indicator of the
highest level of schematicity each construction exists, and hence an indicator of the
semantic scope of the construction and its productivity domain.” In the next section, I
present the major concepts of the framework of constructionalization.
2.2 Constructionalization
Diachronic morphosyntactic change of language is widely accepted to involve
grammaticalization. (Hopper and Traugott 2003; etc.) Traditional work on
grammaticalization has generally focused on the development of atomic elements, i.e.
grammatical markers, or lexical items changing into grammatical items. Recent research
has shown that “grammaticalization may be considered as constructional emergence at an
increasingly schematic level.” (Trousdale 2010:51) Traditionally, the term “construction”
47
has been used to refer to a string, a constituent that provides a context for a lexical item to
become more grammatical. In Traugott and Trousdale’s (2011) framework of
Constructionalization, however, a construction is understood in the sense of Goldberg
(2006:5): it is a form-meaning pairing in which either the meaning of the whole is not
strictly predictable from its component parts or the meaning is predictable from its parts,
but which occurs with sufficient frequency for it to be stored as a pattern. (Trousdale
2010:51) Constructionalization is a construction grammar perspective of the development
of constructions over time.
“Constructionalization is a process in which new (combinations of) signs are created through a sequence of formal and functional reanalyses. These new signs provide language users with new ways of encoding grammatical or lexical meaning. Minimally constructionalization involves reanalysis in terms of morphosyntactic form and semantic/pragmatic function; discourse and phonetic changes may also be implicated at various stages. Purely formal changes, or purely functional changes, are not constructionalizations. The relevant dimensions for constructionalization are generality, productivity and compositionality.” (Traugott and Trousdale 2011)
Form and meaning pairings subsume subcomponents, and each component can
change independently, and therefore there may be many constructional changes on the
way to constructionalization, but not all such changes result in constructionalization. “A
constructionalization requires a new pairing of both meaning and form to occur, that is
each one must be new in some way.” It is symbolized as formnew-meaningnew. (Traugott
and Trousdale 2011) In the next subsections, I provide some relevant concepts that are
based on Traugott and Trousdale (2011).
48
2.2.1 Two approaches to grammaticalization
Both grammaticalization and lexicalization are the extensively influential traditional
terms that are prior to the development of the constructionalization theory. Many scholars
including Traugott who currently focus on constructionalization come from this tradition.
I personally have the same experience. Some issues that I address in this thesis have been
observed in the framework of grammaticalization, e.g. the development of copula from
Old Chinese (Pulleyblank 1995; Shi and Li 2001; etc.).
In the framework of Constructionalization, studies focus on the interface between
grammaticalization and constructions (Croft 2001; Hilpert 2007; Traugott 2008;
Trousdale 2008; etc.), which is termed grammatical constructionalization. The framework
also extends to consider aspects of lexicalization in the history of languages, which is
termed lexical constructionalization. Trousdale (2008) shows how constructional
approaches to language can account for both grammaticalization and lexicalization within
a unified framework with the suggestion that in lexical constructionalization,
constructions become less general, less productive, and less compositional, whereas in
grammatical constructionalization, constructions become more general, schematic and
more productive; yet they also become less compositional.
There have been two different ways in conceptualizing grammaticalization. One
involves increase in dependency and reduction of various aspects of the original
expression, suggested by Givón (1979); Haspelmath (2004); Heine, Claudi and
Hünnemeyer (1991); and Lehmann (1995); etc. Traugott and Trousdale (2011) call this
approach grammaticalization-as-increased-reduction/dependency and abbreviate it as
GIRD. The concept of change in this tradition is primarily limited to morpho-syntactic
49
form, which does not include categories such as topic, focus and discourse markers,
although Lehmann (1995) also refers to semantics, such as bleaching, as one of his
“parameters” of grammaticalization.
In the more recent research, scholars such as Himmelmann (2004) focus on
grammaticalization as expansion of host class, semantic-pragmatic, syntactic contexts.
Traugott and Trousdale (2011) term this approach GE (the acronym of
grammaticalization as expansion). This approach sees a way of reconciling reduction
(increase in dependency) and functional expansion and allows for reduction in form
(increase in dependency) along with the expansion in function of grammatical categories.
This thesis following Traugott and Trousdale (2011) adopts the GE view and treats
grammatical constructionalization as the process of the development of “functional
categories,” which involves pragmatic and semantic factors as well as morphosyntactic
and phonological ones. The GE view not only explains traditional examples of
grammaticalization that involving reduction and increasing dependency, e.g. be going to
‘be in motion in order to V’> be going to ‘future’> be gonna, it also includes less
traditional examples such as discourse markers, marked focus construction, which
involves expansion of its function range. Moreover, the GE view of constructionalization
explains not only the types of changes that involve lexical sources, but also development
of grammatical constructions and categories from non-lexical sources such as
demonstratives, or to mark information structure. For example, this thesis argues that the
Chinese copula shì was constructionalized from the demonstrative pronoun when it
occurred in the topic-comment construction functioning as an anaphor referring to the
complex topic. The process of constructionalization involved host-class and syntactic
50
expansion, e.g. simple nouns occurred in the pre-copula position, semantic and pragmatic
expansion, e.g. copulative linking meaning plus a new information structure. (see Chapter
4 section 4.3 for details)
2.2.2 Motivation: analogy and ‘invited inference’
2.2.2.1 Analogy
Fischer (2010) argues that analogy, which is based on both form and meaning, and which
constitutes a fundamental cognitive principle, plays a primary role in language
acquisition, and also in change. She argues analogies can be very concrete or quite
abstract; an analogy may be based on ‘tokens’ (concrete items) as well as schemas or
‘types’ (abstract structures). By appealing to Anttila’s (2003) notion of an analogical grid,
Fischer suggests for analogy both iconic and indexical forces are important. In other
words, analogy can operate on not only the paradigmatic (iconic) axis, but also the
syntagmatic (indexical) axis. Fischer holds analogy is not only a formal mechanism of
change, but also the cause that motivates change. For her, analogy encompasses
analogical thinking and any analogical thinking can potentially bring about analogical
change.
It is clear that analogical thinking along with categorization is one of the natural
cognitive abilities that human entails, and it is an ability people bring to everyday
activity. However, analogical thinking (cognitive matching), as an internal motivation for
change, does not necessarily lead to analogical change, and therefore is not a cause to
change. According to Traugott and Trousdale (2011), there is no causal relation but only
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enabling relation between analogical thinking and analogical change. Analogical thinking
may predict what might change, how it might change, but they can never cause it to
change. Fischer uses the term “analogy” to cover both motivation and mechanism; by
contrast, Traugott and Trousdale (2011) suggest the term “analogization” for the
mechanism that brings about analogical change. (See 2.3.3.2 for details)
2.2.2.2 Invited inferencing
Semantic bleaching has been considered crucial in grammaticalization. (Lehmann 1985;
Heine and Reh 1984; etc.) Since the 1980s, many scholars have considered the effect that
in the case of grammaticalization, semantic bleaching is accompanied by the coding
(semanticization) of pragmatic implicatures. (Traugott and Trousdale 2011) Sweetser
(1988:400) suggests that the lexical semantics of motion is lost along with the
semanticization of the implicature of purposive motion into future in the development of
future be going to out of motion with a purpose be going to. Traugott (1988:413) also
suggests that the speaker adds the meaning of the target domain to the meaning of the
word and that the emphasis is on increase “in the direction of explicit coding of relevance
and informativeness that earlier was only covertly implied.” Therefore, Traugott and her
colleagues hypothesize that most instances of change originate from “invited inferences”
or “pragmatic implicatures” (see Grice 1989; Levinson 2000) that come to be
semanticized, and both pragmatic and semantic changes precede syntactic/morphological
change.
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For example, Traugott (2007) discusses a range of examples, such as a lot of and a
bit of, which underwent a development from partitive to degree modifier. As partitives,
these constructions had meanings similar to a part of or a share of. Since a part of
something suggests a quantity, these partitives were associated with quantifiers via
invited inferencing or pragmatic implicature. For example, a bit of derives from ‘a bite
out of’ and consequently implies a small piece or quantity. The quantity, along with a
scalar meaning, as an implicature of the partitive was mapped onto entities and
semanticized as the abstract semantics of quantifiers and degree modifiers.
This thesis argues the emergence of the cleft construction was essentially motivated
by invited inferencing, e.g. the speakers’ communicative strategies in asserting a
presupposition with a contrastive focus. The pragmatic inferencing led to semantic
reanalysis (cleft specificational), and was combined with the newly emerged syntactic
recruitment of the nominalization [XP de] motivated by analogical thinking modeling
Old Chinese nominalization [XP zhě]. (See Chapter 5 section 5.3 for details)
2.2.3 Mechanisms: reanalysis, analogization and subjectification
While ‘motivation’ has to do with the ‘why’ of change, ‘mechanism’ has to do with the
‘how’ of change. The main mechanisms for language change are usually considered to be
reanalysis (the focus here is on difference from the original source8), and analogization or
analogical extension (the focus here is on matching of the original source with some
extant model). (Hopper and Traugott 2003) 8 The term “reanalysis” is not useful for cases of a child or second language learner has not yet learned a construction and interprets it in a different way from the speaker. Here, “re”-analysis has not occurred, only “different” analysis. (Traugott 2011)
53
Bybee (2003, 2006) treats frequency as mechanism. For constructionalization,
frequency is key to Goldberg and Croft’s view of entrenchment, and entrenchment occurs
after innovation when the new form is “being integrated and spread through the system”
(Leech, Hundt, Mair, Smith 2009:269). However, while repetition by members of a
language community undoubtedly is a major factor in the fixing, freezing, and
autonomizing associated with grammaticalization, frequency itself appears implausible as
a mechanism for the onset of grammaticalization. (Traugott 2009) Moreover,
mechanisms such as reanalysis and analogization may lead to individual innovations, but
do not lead to change unless a community of speakers adopts and conventionalizes that
innovation.
2.2.3.1 Reanalysis
Langacker (1977:58) defines reanalysis as “change in structure of an expression or class
of expressions that does not involve any immediate or intrinsic modification of its surface
manifestation.” There are two types of reanalysis: one is “resegmentation,” i.e. boundary
loss, boundary creation, boundary shift; the other one is “syntactic/semantic
reformulation,” i.e. re-bracketing, re-categorizing, and re-patterning. All examples of
reanalysis involve changes in constituency (re-bracketing of elements in certain
constructions), and reassignment of morphemes to different semantic-syntactic category
labels. For example: be going to from [be+ main verb+ progressive aspect + to] to a
future tense marker: [be going] [to V]> [[be going to] V]> [Auxiliary V].
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Hopper and Traugott (2003:39) argue that reanalysis is the primary mechanism that
leads to grammaticalization. Grammaticalization and reanalysis are distinct but intersect:
grammaticalization cannot be realized without reanalysis, but it is not limited to
reanalysis. Traugott and Trousdale (2011) mention one of the objections against the claim
that reanalysis and grammaticalization are closely linked has been that reanalysis is
abrupt but grammaticalization is gradual. Gradualness involves small steps in change,
whereas in early generative work “reanalysis was associated not only with abrupt,
discrete changes, but also large macro-parametric steps, saltations, or even ‘catastrophes’
(Lightfoot 1979, 1991).” However, “given current theories of micro-parameters, syntactic
feature, reanalysis is not longer construed as saltation. It can be associated with
gradualness, in the sense of micro-steps.” The changes are discrete, but step-wise, micro-
step by micro-step, not “catastrophic saltations.” Constructionalization incorporates
notions of both gradualness (diachronic) and gradience (the synchronic result of
gradualness) (Traugott and Trousdale 2010).
This thesis argues that the emergence of the copular construction [(XPi) COP XPj
(PTCL)][(SEMi) copulative linking SEMj (Declarative)] is a process of grammatical
constructionalization that involved reanalysis of the topic-comment construction [(XPi)
[shì XPj PTCL]][(Topici) [Anaphor SEMj Declarative]] through re-bracketing and
re-categorizing, whereby the demonstrative pronoun shì that functioned as the anaphor
referring to the topic phrase evolved into the copula shì. (See Chapter 4 section 4.3 for
details)
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2.2.3.2 Analogization
In the framework of constructionalization, analogy involves analogical thinking as one of
the motivations and analogization (analogical change or analogical extension) as one of
the mechanisms. As I have shown in 2.2.2.1, analogical thinking is one of the enabling
factors that allow change, though it does not necessarily bring about change, whereas
analogization works as mechanism that can give rise to new structures. At every stage,
any language enables a set of options that speakers can take, and the options can be very
unpredictable. Analogical thinking may predict what might have the potential to change;
yet it may or may not further eventually enable analogical change. When analogical
change occurs, analogization takes place. When analogization happens, it is
simultaneously reanalysis. “All analogizations are instances of reanalysis, because each
case of analogization involves a slight restructuring of what the speaker or hearer knows
about a particular expression.” (Traugott and Trousdale 2011) Therefore, in the process
of change, analogical thinking may precede analogization, and analogization occurs as
reanalysis. All analogization (analogical changes) involve reanalysis, but not all
reanalysis is motivated by analogical thinking. However, analogization and reanalysis as
change mechanisms may lead to individual innovations, but do not lead to change unless
they are frequently used and conventionalized by a community of speakers.
Analogization involves analogical match, which means the changing construction is
matched to an extant exemplar through the process of analogization. Fischer (2010)
claims any analogical match allows change. The analogical match can be very loose both
with tokens on the concrete level and structures on the abstract level, as long as there is
an analogical thinking that links two tokens or structures together. Therefore for Fischer,
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in terms of change, the analogical model is very broad. For example, for be going to,
Fischer argues its changing into a future auxiliary takes other clausal patterns of this type,
i.e. auxiliary-verb patterns such as the other future pattern I will go, as the iconic
analogical model. Another example she gives is: in the process of the verbal adjunct i.e.
undoubtedly, surprisingly, changing into pragmatic marker in English, the verbal adjunct
appearing at the sentence initial position is analogized by the ellipted clausal phrases
(reduced modal clauses) that were used as a separate or independent phrase preceding the
main proposition and with scope over this proposition (Fischer 2010:15).
I disagree with Fischer in that I believe analogical thinking does not cause change
(Fischer 2010:31), and pre-existing analogical model should not be very loose to allow
change. In other words, the match that allows analogization should be constrained, i.e. the
analogical model and the source construction should at least partially share the similar
morphosyntactic environment and constraints. This is because analogical thinking is such
a powerful mental action that can almost link everything in the world together. Traugott
and Trousdale (2011) suggest in constructionalization, analogization involves a new
structure with at least one subcomponent of meaning and one of form matched to another
extant construction. For example, the existent English binominal quantifier a bit of/a lot
of may have been taken as the analogical model for a shred of, because a shred of has at
least one subcomponent of meaning, i.e. quantifier, and one of form, i.e. a … of, matched
to a bit of/a lot of. One could argue that a shred of changing into a quantifier, just like a
bit of/a lot of, underwent a process of reanalysis (rebracketing, boundary shift) motivated
by semantic mismatch in speakers’ use, without analogization involved. However, from a
usage-based perspective intending to avoid the suggestion that a construction or the
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language itself is doing something, we can assume that a shred of should not have been
developing by itself, but speakers might have well matched it to something, possibly a lot
of/a bit of. This thesis argues the emergence of the copular construction [(XPi) COP XPj
(PTCL)][(SEMi) copulative linking SEMj (Declarative)] underwent a process of
analogization modeling the structure of the full transitive verb wéi: [(XPi) wéi XPj
(PTCL)][SEMi BE SEMj (Declarative)] in Old Chinese. (See Chapter 4 section 4.3
for details)
2.2.4 Constructional taxonomies
In the constructional network, it is the relationships that exist between constructions that
are crucial in any account of variation and change. Constructions display different
degrees of schematicity; constructions lower in the taxonomy inherit properties form
those higher in the taxonomy; and constructions intersect with each other at different
levels in the taxonomy. This intersection of constructions is relevant not only to issues of
mismatch in grammaticalization (Traugott 2007), but also to perceptions of synchronic
gradience, which emerge as the result of gradual grammaticalizaiton. (Trousdale 2010)
Traugott (2007) proposes a hierarchy of levels of schematic constructions:
a. Macro-constructions: highly abstract, schematic constructions
b. Meso-constructions: fairly abstract constructions, subschemas that have similar
semantics and/or syntax
c. Micro-constructions: individual construction types
d. Constructs: instances of micro-constructions, tokens of actual use, the locus of
change
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All four constructional levels are of importance in various stages of the
grammaticalization process. (Trousdale 2010) The first three levels are abstract types, as
distinct from actual utterances. The last one is data-points, or ‘tokens.’ Macro-
constructions of a given taxonomy at the superordinate level are highly differentiated
from other superordinate categories; by contrast, meso-constructions and micro-
constructions at the subordinate level have high internal similarity. “The most salient
level of categorization is normally referred to as the basic-level -- micro-level: it is at this
level of the categorical taxonomy that ‘the largest amount of information about an item
can be obtained with the least cognitive effort’ (Ungerer and Schmid 1996: 68).”
(Trousdale 2010:5)
Traugott and Trousdale (2011) modified the hierarchical taxonomy of schematic
constructions proposed by Traugott (2007). In the new version, they retain the lower
constructional levels of micro-construction and construct, and adopt the term of schema
and subschema for the original macro- and meso- constructions. They suggest that
macro- and meso-constructions are the mental representations of the linguistic notions of
schemas, whereas schema is a more tangible concept and provides the notion of
construction as a form and meaning pairing. In this thesis, I follow Traugott and
Trousdale (2011) and adopt the constructional taxonomy as:
a. Schemas: abstract, schematic constructions
b. Subschemas: less abstract, schematic constructions
c. Micro-constructions: individual construction types
d. Constructs: instances of micro-constructions, tokens of actual use, the locus of
change
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2.2.5 Constructionalization dimensions
A constructionalization perspective sees both grammatical constructionalization and
lexical constructionalization as directional with generality/schematicity, productivity and
compositionality as the parameters. For grammatical constructionalization, it is as
expansion on syntagmatic and paradigmatic dimensions (including host-class expansion)
and reduction or increase dependence in the form. Therefore, the dimensions for
grammatical constructionalization are increased generality, schematicity, productivity,
and decrease in compositionality (Trousdale 2010; Traugott and Trousdale 2011).
Increase in generality involves semantic bleaching that indicates less restricted
semantics and allows more collocation. According to Bybee and McClelland (2005: 391),
collocational freedom leads to increase in the type frequency of a construction. Increase
in productivity is associated with constructional expansion on different levels. For
example: as for the binominal strings such as a lot of, a bit of and a shred of, increase in
generality occurs on the level of micro-construction, e.g. a shred of was extended from
collocates with partitive properties (a lot of, a bit of); it also occurs at the abstract,
schematic level: the binominal construction became generalized and could be employed
in a much larger set of discourse contexts including those which would be incompatible
with their original meaning. Hoffmann (2005) makes the similar point by taking complex
prepositions as examples. Increase in generality on the schematic level is linked with the
increase of schematicity. Grammatical constructionalization is also characterized by
decrease in compositionality. According to Traugott and Trousdale (2011), decrease in
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compositionality is decrease in the transparency of the match between meaning and form
and decrease in compositionality is gradient and gradual.
2.2.6 Constructionalization and constructional changes
As I have shown in the beginning of 2.2, constructionalization requires both form and
meaning change, and a new form and meaning pairing to occur. Purely formal changes,
or purely functional changes are not constructionalization. They are constructional
changes. When the semantic or syntactic subcomponent of a construction changes
independently, constructional change occurs.
Traugott (2012) convincingly argues that constructionalization is distinct from
constructional changes in that constructional changes are language change including pre-
constructionalizaiton changes, constructionalization, and post-constructionalization
changes as in Figure 2.3.
Figure 2.3: Constructional changes related to constructionalization
Other than those changes, constructional changes also involve systemic change, e.g.
great vowel shift; phonology alone change, e.g. loss of rhoticity; syntax alone change, e.g.
word order change; morphology alone change, e.g. clitic>inflection; semantic alone
pre‐constructionalization constructionalization post‐
constructionalization
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change, or change in frequency use. However constructionalization is a subset of
constructional changes in which morphosyntactic new form and meaning pairing is
created through a sequence of small steps in which form and meaning are reanalyzed. All
constructional changes including constructionalization are gradual processes involving
many micro-steps.
Constructional changes also incorporate the traditional grammaticalization of GE
and GIRD. Most instances of GE and GIRD occur in constructionalization and post-
constructionalization. Some instances also occur in pre-constructionalization, e.g.
Diewald’s (2006) critical context and Heine’s (2002) bridging context.
2.3 Summary
In this chapter, I have focused on the major issues and principles that are crucial to the
theories of construction grammar and made it clear that the framework I adopt in this
thesis is consistent with the theories put forward by Croft (2001), and Goldberg (2006).
This chapter also focuses on the theoretical framework of constructionalization (Traugott
and Trousdale 2011), a construction grammar perspective on the development of
constructions over time.
In the following chapters, I focus on the structure and function of the Chinese
copular construction within the framework of construction grammar and the
constructionalization process of the copular construction and its subschemas coming into
being in the history of Chinese.
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Chapter 3
A Copula Analysis of Shì in The Chinese Cleft
Construction
3.1 Introduction
“Copula” is a Latin word meaning a connection, a link. It is generally used to refer to the
uses of the English verb ‘to be’ and its equivalent in world languages. The copula in
Modern Chinese is shì, and typically occurs with predicative nominal, exemplified by
xuéshēng in (1).
(1) 我 是 学生
wǒ shì xuéshēng
SG1 COP student
‘I am a student.’
Example (1) is a typical copular sentence in Chinese with a subject followed by the
copula shì and a nominal predicate. It has the form [NP COP NP] and the copulative
linking meaning, specifically the post-copula predicate ‘a student’ is the property to
characterize the subject ‘I.’ As for the information structure, (1) encodes predicate
informational focus, which means the subject ‘I’ is the topic encoding given information,
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and the post-copula nominal predicate xuéshēng ‘a student’ indicates new information
that is the informational focus (see section 3.5 for details).
Non-nominals can also occur in either the subject position or the predicate position
in a copular sentence. For example, in (2a), the verbal phrase kàn diànshì ‘watch TV’
appears in the predicate position, and a clause tā qù Shànghǎi ‘he goes to Shanghai’ in
the subject position of (2b). Furthermore, as in any Chinese sentence, the subject can be a
zero as in (2c).
(2) a. 我 的 爱好 是 看 电视
wǒ de àihào shì kàn diànshì
SG1 ASS hobby COP watch TV
‘My hobby is to watch TV.’
b. 他 去 上海 是 老板 的 决定
tā qù Shànghǎi shì láobǎn de juéding
SG3 go Shanghai COP boss ASS decide
‘His going to Shanghai is boss’s decision.’
c. 是 我 的 错
shì wǒ de cuò
COP SG1 ASSOC fault
‘It is my fault.’
The examples in (1) and (2) suggest that the Chinese copular sentences appear to
have the structure [(XP) COP XP], in which XP can be nominal or non-nominal. My
search of copular sentences with copulative linking meaning in CCL Modern Chinese
Corpus demonstrates that 87.6% (4380 sentences out of 5000) of the copular sentences
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are [NP COP NP], whereas occurrences such as those in (2) only take up 12.4%. The
outcome of the survey confirms that [NP COP NP] is the prototypical structure of a
Chinese copular sentence.
Following Li and Thompson (1981), I consider example (3) to be a copular
sentence consisting of a subject, the copula shì, and a nominalized predicate marked by
the nominalizer de. It is also commonly known as shì…de construction or the cleft
construction in Chinese linguistic literature (Li and Thompson 1981; Hashimoto 1969;
Teng 1979; Paris 1979; etc.). In a sentence like (3), the linguistic form immediately after
shì i.e. zuótiān ‘yesterday,’ constitutes the key element of the contrastive focus.
(3) 她 是 昨天 去 上海 的
tā shì zuótiān qù shànghǎi de
SG3 COP yesterday go to Shanghai NOM
‘It was yesterday that she went to Shanghai.’
There has been an extensive debate among Chinese linguists on whether shì is a
copula when it occurs in cleft sentences. Lü (1979); Zhu (1982); Chao (1968); Hashimoto
(1969); Li and Thompson (1981) among others, suggest that shì is simply a verb in
Modern Chinese. Thus, it functions as a copula verb in cleft sentences. However, other
linguists such as Teng (1979); Zhu (1997); Shi (1994); Choi (2006), claim shì in cleft
sentences is not so. The major reason for the debate is the co-existence of examples
resembling (4) with those like (3). Comparing the two sentences in (3) and (4), we see
that, in spite of the absence of de at the end of (4), they are essentially the same. Based on
this observation, some linguists (Teng 1979; Huang 1998; etc.) believe examples such as
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(3) and (4) share the simplex predication: [NP FM VP (PTCL)] and shì in cleft sentences
is not a copula verb, but a focus marker. Huang (1998:213) claims that shì in cleft
sentences is a focus operator having the status of an adverb.
(4) 她 是 昨天 去 上海
tā shì zuótiān qù shànghǎi
SG3 COP yesterday go to Shanghai
‘It was yesterday that she went to Shanghai.’
This chapter, based on a cross-linguistic understanding of the concept of copula,
argues for a systematic treatment of shì in Modern Chinese as a copula verb. I define the
Chinese copula shì as an invariant non-inflectional verb that co-occurs with certain
lexemes when they together form a predicate. In light of the theory of Construction
Grammar, I treat the copular construction as a form and meaning pairing: [(XPi) COP
XPj][SEMi copulative linking SEMj] with the prototype form [NP COP NP]. The
copulative linking involves two subschemas: specificational and predicational. Huang’s
simplex predication treatment of the cleft construction and treating shì as an adverb are
problematic as he fails to consider the fact that the cleft construction entails the
specificational meaning rather than a transitory event or process that the simplex
predication may encode. I propose that shì is a systematic invariant copula verb in
Modern Chinese, and the cleft construction is complex predication that can be
schematized as [NPi COP NOMj] (NOM=(ADV/TP 9 /PP) VP/S/NP de)[SEMi
specificational+contrastive SEMj]. “Complex” here is understood as a structure that
9 TP= time phrase
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involves a subordinate nominalization (NOM). Semantically, the cleft construction is
specificational with contrastive, which involves a restricted non-referential set encoded
by the nominalization entering into a class-membership relation with a referential subject
and the immediate post-copula element encoding contrastive focus.
The chapter is structured as follows: section 3.2 explains the syntactic concept of
“copula;” section 3.3 discusses the semantics of the Chinese copula; in section 3.4, I
provide a constructional schematic taxonomy for the prototypical copular construction.
Section 3.5 discusses the concept of “cleft,” introduces the adverb analysis proposed by
Huang (1998) along with my counterarguments to it, and proposes my analysis on the
cleft construction; section 3.6 is the conclusion.
3.2 The syntactic concept of “copula”
A common definition of “copula” found in dictionaries, as well as in the linguistic
literature, is as follows:
(5) A copula is “a word that links a subject and a predicate.” (Narahara 2002: 16)
The terms “subject” and “predicate” need to be specified to fully understand the
above definition of “copula.” In the generative literature, subject is the category that
occupies the specifier position of IP ([Spec, IP]), and the predicate is the projection of a
lexical category that assigns a theta-role to an argument. According to a typical definition
in some functional descriptive linguistics, the subject of a sentence is the “phrase that has
a ‘doing’ or ‘being’ relationship with the verb in that sentence.” (Li and Thompson 1981:
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87) The predicate is the part of a sentence containing what is said about the subject. “The
word ‘predicate’ is a functional term in opposition with the functional term ‘subject,’ …
it commonly refers to the function of a verb phrase…. A predicate, however, is not
necessarily a verb phrase.” (Li and Thompson 1981: 140) In terms of a copular sentence,
traditionally, the term “predicate” has a broad sense, which consists of the copula verb
and the post-copula phrase, and a narrow sense that excludes the copula and only
indicates the post-copula phrase. The familiar terms such as nominal predicate, adjectival
predicate, and verbal predicate all apply to the narrow sense of “predicate” (Kahn 1973,
Wang 1937). Jespersen (1924) introduced the term “predicative” to apply to predicates in
this narrow sense to avoid ambiguity. However, most linguists find that once recognized,
the ambiguity is harmless, and they keep using the term “predicate” for both the narrow
and broad senses. In my discussion, following the tradition, I use the term “predicate” to
signify either copula plus post-copula phrase or post-copula phrase itself.
The definition in (5) implies that in a copular sentence, the copula links up the
subject and the predicate. However, the definition does not characterize the grammatical
category of “copula,” and the grammatical relations among “subject,” “copula,” and
“predicate” are unclear. Radford (1997), applying the minimalist approach, modifies the
definition in (5) and defines “copula” as:
(6) A verb used to link a subject with a non-verbal predicate.
The definition in (6) explicitly identifies “copula” as a verb and suggests that the
predicate (the broad sense) of a copular sentence consists of both a copula verb and a
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non-verbal predicate (the narrow sense). Radford further defines “verb” in certain
languages as:
(7) A category of word that has the morphological property that can carry a range
of inflections including past tense.
To specify the category of the predicate as non-verbal in (6) amounts to saying that
the function of a copula as a predicate maker is added to the elements that normally do
not form predicates on their own. The following examples present the occurrences of the
Standard English copula.
(8) a. This is a cup.
b. *This a cup
(9) a. The cups are full.
b. *The cups full.
(10) a. The cup is on the desk.
b. *The cup on the desk
(11) a. *He was break the cup.
b. He broke the cup.
The above examples show that in Standard English, nominal, adjectival and
prepositional phrases cannot function as predicates on their own but must be combined
with a copula in the predicate position, as exemplified in (8)-(10). On the other hand,
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verbal phrases that function as a predicate on their own are not compatible with a copula,
as in (11).
Hengeveld (1992) considers the copula to be meaningless, “semantically empty,”
and a mere carrier of inflectional features for predicate phrases. Stassen (1997:66)
proposes the Dummy Hypothesis and argues that the idea underlying the hypothesis is
that the copula is basically a “hat-rack” for categories of verbal morphology. This idea
coincides with Lyons’s who claims that the principal function of the copula verb ‘to be’
in Russian, Greek and Latin is to serve as the locus in surface structure for the marking of
tense, mood and aspect. (Lyons 1968: 322)
Radford’s definition in (6) and Hengeveld, Stassen and Lyons’ proposals unravel
the syntactic functions of a copula:
a. A copula functions as a linker between subject and non-verbal predicate.
b. A copula functions as a syntactic “hat-rack” to attach tense and other verbal
inflectional features to a clause that contains a non-verbal predicate.
c. A copula functions as a predicate marker that is added to lexemes that do not form
predicates on their own.
Two interpretations can be inferred from the above discussion:
a. First, a predicate in which verbal inflectional categories are coded should never
contain a copula.
b. Second, all copulas should carry verbal inflectional categories.
In the following discussion, however, I will show that the Chinese copula is
incompatible with both of these two interpretations.
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In standard Modern Chinese, nominal phrases cannot function as predicate on their
own and can only be combined with a copula in predicate position, as is exemplified in
(12). Other than nominal phrases, adjectival, prepositional and verbal phrases can
function as a predicate on their own, as in (13).
(12) a. *我 学生10
wǒ xuéshēng
SG1 student
b. 我 是 学生
wǒ shì xuéshēng
SG1 COP student
‘I am a student.’
(13) a. 她 很 漂亮
tā hěn piàoliàng
SG3 very pretty
‘She (is) very pretty.’
b. 她 在 北京
tā zài Běijīng
SG3 at Beijing
‘She (is) at Beijng.’
10In colloquial spoken Chinese, (12a) can be acceptable with a prosodic pause between wǒ ‘I’ and xuéshēng ‘student.’ In fact, the copula can always be dropped in non-standard spoken Chinese as well as many languages. However, in standard or written Chinese, (12a) is ungrammatical.
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c. 她 打了 小王
tā dǎ-le Xiǎowáng
SG3 hit-PERF Xiaowang
‘She hit Xiaowang.’
Examples in (12) show that the copula is added to phrases that do not form a
predicate on their own. In Chinese, the adjectives are treated as intransitive verbs (Li and
Thompson 1981: 141) and prepositions are considered as coverbs (Li and Thompson
1981: 356); both of them belong to the category of non-nominal and can form a predicate
on their own.
According to Radford’s definition of “verb” in (7), the non-verbal predicates are
those that do not have the morphological property of inflection, the non-inflecting
category. In English and other European languages, nominal, adjectival and prepositional
phrases are not subject to tense, modal, and aspect inflections, and they are referred to as
the non-inflecting categories here. Since only the non-inflecting categories occur in the
predicate position of a copular sentence, the copula’s function of linking subject and non-
verbal predicate holds. However, in some languages, Chinese included, not only nominal
predicates can occur in copular sentences, non-nominal predicates with coded verbal
inflectional categories such as aspects can also be found following the copula. The
following examples illustrate the difference:
(14) *What makes him happy is has been to Beijing.
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(15) a. 我 的 爱好 是 看 电视
wǒ de àihào shì kàn diànshì
SG1 ASSOC hobby COP watch TV
‘My hobby is to watch TV.’
b. 她 的 遗憾 是 只 跑了 一 圈
tā de yíhàn shì zhǐ pǎo-le yī quān
SG3 ASSOC regret COP only run-PERF one lap
‘Her regret is that she has only run one lap.’
In (15a&b), the predicates of the copular sentences contain the copula and a verbal
phrase. In (15b), the verbal predicate has a perfective marker attached to it. The fact that
the inflected verbal category is also found in the predicate position of a copular sentence
marks a significant distinction between the European and Chinese copular sentences.
In Standard English, the copula’s “hat-rack” function holds, as the copula verb ‘to
be’ supplies tense and other verbal inflectional categories to the clauses that have
nominal, adjectival and prepositional phrases as the predicates. However the Chinese
copula never carries any verbal morphology; and therefore it is invariant. The following
English and Chinese examples demonstrate the difference:
(16) a. I am his student.
b. I was his student last year.
(17) a. 我 是 他 的 学生
wǒ shì tā de xuéshēng
SG1 COP SG3 ASSOC student
‘I am his student.’
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b. 去年 我 是 他 的 学生
qùnián wǒ shì tā de xuéshēng
last year SG1 COP SG3 ASSOC student
‘I was his student last year.’
In (16a), the copula was expresses past tense, while in (17b), there is no past tense
inflection attached to the copula shì. The sense of past in Chinese is coded only by the
temporal phrase qùnián ‘last year’ in (17b). As for (16b), if the temporal phrase ‘last
year’ is not specified, the clause is still past with the past tense marker in was. However,
if qùnián ‘last year’ is not present in (17b), the sentence does not encode the meaning of
the past.
(18) 他 是 *了/*过/*着 老师
tā shì *-le/*-guò /*-zhe lǎoshī
SG3 COP PERF/EXP/IMP teacher
In Chinese a typical verb can be morphologically marked to denote different
aspects, such as the verb pǎo ‘run’ in (15b). As an invariant non-inflectional copula verb,
shì is not subject to any Chinese aspect markers in (18), be it perfective -le, experiential -
guò, or imperfective -zhe.
The asymmetry between (14) and (15), as well as that between (16b) and (17b)
suggests that the definition in (6) and its derived functions of “copula” are not cross-
linguistically applicable. Therefore, I propose the following definition for the Chinese
copula:
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(19) Chinese copula shì is an invariant non-inflectional verb that co-occurs with
certain lexemes whereby they together form the predicate of a copular sentence.
Semantically, it functions to signal either a predicational or a specificational meaning.
Based on the definition (19), in (17a), wǒ ‘I’ is the subject, the copula shì marks the
noun phrase tā de xuéshēng ‘his student’ as a nominal predicate, and they together
function as the predicate of the sentence. In (15a), the copula shì co-occurs with the
verbal phrase kàn diànshì ‘watch TV,’ and they together form the predicate of the
sentence. In the following, I will discuss the basic semantic functions of the Chinese
copula shì.
3.3 The semantics of copula
As stated in the previous section, Hengeveld (1992) considers the copula to be
meaningless, ‘semantically empty,’ a mere carrier of inflectional features for predicate
phrases. Stassen (1997) proposes that the copula is a dummy, and does not contain any
meaning. Pustet (2003:5) also points out that “a copula does not add any semantic content
to the predicate phrase it is contained in.”
However, many linguists hold that although copula itself is a semantically null verb,
copular sentences express a variety of copulative meanings. Blom and Daalder (1977)
propose that copular sentences in the languages of the world fall into two semantic
classes based on the relationship between the objective information encoded in the
subject and predicate, which are often referred to as “predicational” and “specificational”
(Declerck, 1986: 2).
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A predicational sentence predicates a non-referential property of the referential
subject. “Predicational” has also been called “attributive” (Gundel 1977; Lyons 1968;
Halliday 1970), “characterizational” (Kuno and Wongkhomthong 1981; Quirk et al.
1985), “ascriptive” (Kahn 1973), etc. Higgins (1979: 214) suggests that predicational is
“being about” something. The following examples can be said to be predicational:
(20) a. Mary is a student.
b. The cup is full.
The predicate in (20a), ‘a student’ signals the characteristic of Mary ‘being a
student,’ and in (20b) ‘being full’ is a description of the cup.
The semantics of the specificational relationship is not as straightforward as that of
the predicational relationship. The term “specificational” has been adopted in a broader
sense for “identificational” (Kuno and Wongkhomthong 1981; Quirk et al. 1985),
“equative” (Halliday 1970b; Huddleston 1971; Kahn 1973), etc. Higgins (1979) argues
that specificational sentences function like lists: the subject of a specificational sentence
acts as the heading of the list and the post-copula elements serve as items on that list.
Higgins suggests that specificational sentences involve a “value-variable” relation. He
notes, “the heading of a list provides a ‘variable’, thereby delimiting a certain domain, to
which the items on the list conform as ‘values’ of that variable” (Higgins 1979: 155).
Higgins (1979: 214) argues that specificational sentences do not involve a predication
relationship, since “The whole notion of being ‘about’ something is alien to a list”.
Likewise, Declerck (1986: 2) defines a specificational sentence as one whose semantic
function is to specify a value for a variable.
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Patten (2010), however, aiming at the definition of specificational meaning, argues
that the “value-variable” relation is purely information-structural and is not the product of
the semantic contribution of its components, consequently “the definition of
specificational meaning as a “value-variable” relationship cannot help us identify what
distinguishes specificational (identifying) copular sentences from predicational
(descriptive) copular sentences.” (Patten 2010:64) She proposes that specificational
meaning is the product of a special type of nominal predication relation. Unlike
predicational sentences, specificational sentences involve a restricted set (existentially
presupposed or asserted) that enters into a class-membership relation with a referential
expression. In other words, the crucial characteristic for creating specificational meaning
is that a copular sentence denotes a universally quantified restricted or existentially
presupposed set, which is inherent to the semantics of definite noun phrases, and a
referential member that specifying the set. Example (21) presents what Patten calls the
canonical specificational sentence:
(21) The best student we have is Sally.
The subject in (21), the definite NP ‘the best student we have,’ denotes a restricted,
quantified set, which is paired with a referential nominal predicate ‘Sally.’
(22) a. The one who stole the money is Bill.
b. Mr. Obama is the president of the United States.
(23) Mr. DuPont is my father.
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The two examples in (22) are both specificational, which specifies a referential
member for a non-referential and restricted set. ‘Bill’ is a referential member of the
restricted set ‘the one who stole the money;’ ‘Mr. Obama’ is the referential member of
the restricted set ‘the president of the United States.’ However, (23) is equational, in
which both of the subject and the predicate are semantically referential and encode a one
to one class-membership predication relation. I treat equational as a sub-class of
specificational relationship. The major difference between an equational and a
specificational copular sentence is that in equational sentences the subject and the
predicate are both semantically referential, whereas a specificational sentence specifies a
referential member for a non-referential restricted set.
Similarly, Chinese copular sentences can also be classified into the two semantic
copulative categories: specificational and predicational. Examples in (24) are all
specificational. (24a&b) are specificational sentences, in which the subject and the
nominal predicate form a class-member relationship. (24c) is equational with a referential
subject and predicate.
(24) a. 我 做 的 是 这个
wǒ zuò de shì zhè -ge
SG1 make NOM COP this CL
‘What I made is this one.’
b. 奥巴马 是 美国 总统
àobāmǎ shì měiguó zǒngtǒng
Obama COP US president
‘Obama is the president of the US.’
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c. 那 个 人 是 我 妈
nà ge rén shì wǒ mā
that CL person COP my mother
‘That person is my mother.’
Examples in (25) can all be said to be predicational, and to predicate a property or
characteristic of the subject.
(25) a. 她 是 黄 头发
tā shì huáng tóufà
SG3 COP yellow hair
‘She has yellow hair.’
b. 她 是 个 学生
tā shì ge xuéshēng
SG3 COP CL student
‘She is a student.’
3.4 The constructional framework
Above I have discussed the syntactic functions of a copula and the semantics of copular
sentences. Linguists of different theoretical traditions in general recognize the two
categories of copular sentences: specificational and predicational, and the question arises
whether the two categories involve one or two different copulas. Halliday (1967); Quirk
and Greenbaum (1973); Kahn (1973); etc. believe the dichotomy of the semantics of
copular sentences comes from there being two ‘be’s, which have different syntactic
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functions. In Montague grammar (Montague 1973; Dowty et al. 1981; Partee 1999), a
distinction is made between the two ‘be’s: the ‘be’ of predication and the ‘be’ of
specificity (equality, identity and specificity). They are distinguished from each other by
the types of their arguments. The ‘be’ of the predicational takes two arguments of type
<e>, a subject entity, and type <e,t>, the returned truth value when offered its subject
entity. However, the ‘be’ of the specificational takes two arguments of type <e>, two
entities. Stowell (1989:255) considers the predicative ‘be’ to be a raising verb11, and the
specificity ‘be’ is “a two-place predicate conveying a relation of identity holding between
two referential NPs.”
Within the framework of Construction grammar, Croft (2001:266) suggests: a
copular construction
“[p]rofiles the assertion classifying the subject as belonging to the category of the predicate nominal, or possessing the property of the predicate nominal. However, the copula verb itself is of minimal semantic content, adding only a predicative function to a maximally schematic categorization of the referent of the subject argument. It can be argued that the profile of the whole clause is determined partly by the copula and partly by the predicate noun/adjective—categorization of the subject referent as being of the type profiled by the predicate noun, or ascription of the property profiled by the predicate adjective.”
I suggest that there is only one copula involved and the dichotomy of the semantics
of copular sentences is captured by the two subschemas under the schema -- the copular
11 By verb raising it means verb movement to V, which has been posited for infinitival verbs in languages e.g. English, German and Dutch. The hypothesis is that the verb of an infinitival complement, if the complement is not extraposed is moved and adjoined to its governing verb, thereby creating a verb-cluster. Dutch Verb Raising creates the structure in (ib) (assuming the SOV d-structure in (i)a). (Evers 1975; Rutten 1991; etc.) (i) a. dat Jan [VP [VP hard werken1] willen2] heeft that Jan hard work want-to has b. dat Jan [VP [VP hard t1] t2] heeft willen2 werken1 that Jan has wanted to work hard
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construction. In this thesis, the Chinese copular construction is treated to be a form and
meaning pairing, which has the form [(XP) COP XP] with [NP COP NP] as the prototype
and denotes copulative linking meaning involving specificational or predicational. Even
if non-nominals occur at the XP position of the copular construction, the construction’s
conventional meaning overrides the meanings associated with verbal phrases or clauses
that denote temporal transitory process, and therefore it still denotes a proposition with
the meaning of specificational or predicational. In other words, the meaning of non-
transitory states or situations that can be described or specified is coerced out from the
copular construction even if verbal phrases or clauses that occur in the subject or
predicate position are temporally and aspectually inflected. The prototypical copular
construction can be schematized as: [NPi COP NPj][SEMi copulative linking SEMj].
I propose a constructional schematic taxonomy for the prototypical Chinese copular
construction:
Figure 3.1: The constructional schematic taxonomy of the prototypical Chinese copular
construction
[NPiCOPNPj]<‐‐>[SEMicopulativelinkingSEMj]
[NPiCOPNPj]<‐‐>[SEMispeciPicationalSEMj]
[NPiCOPNPj]<‐‐>[SEMiequationalSEMj]
[NPiCOPNPj]<‐‐>[SEMispeciPicationalSEMj]
[NPiCOPNOMj]<‐‐>[SEMispeciPicational+contrastiveSEMj]
[NPiCOPNPj]<‐‐>[SEMipredicationalSEMj]
SchemaSubschemaSubsubschema
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In the constructional schematic taxonomy of the prototypical Chinese copular
construction, [NPi COP NPj][SEMi copulative linking SEMj] is the abstract schema,
under which [NP COP NP] with specificational and predicational meanings are two less
abstract schemas. I categorize three sub subschemas under the schema of [NPi COP
NPj][SEMi specificational SEMj]: [NPi COP NPj][SEMi equational SEMj],
[NPi COP NPj][SEMi specificational SEMj], and the cleft construction [NPi COP
NOMj][SEMi specificational+contrastive SEMj]. In terms of information structure,
both equational and specificational copular sentences encode informational focus in
which the subject is the topic encoding given information, and the post-copula predicate
as a whole indicates new information that is the informational focus; whereas the cleft
sentences indicate contrastive focus encoded by the immediate post-copula element. In
the next section, I will discuss the concept of cleft.
3.5 The concept of cleft
3.5.1 The cleft construction
The cleft construction is a subtype of the copular construction. A cleft sentence is a
complex sentence in which a simple sentence is expressed using a main clause and a
subordinate clause. (Quirk at el. 1985; Levinson 1983; etc.) Traditionally, the English
cleft includes two sup-types: it-cleft and pseudo-cleft (all/what/the-cleft).
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In English, a prototypical it-cleft sentence has the form [It COP NP RC12]13 as in
(26).
(26) It is John who grimaced.
In an English pseudo-cleft sentence, the subordinated clause is a free relative clause
headed by what, all, or a relative clause headed by the one, as in (27).
(27) a. The one who grimaced is John.
b. What John did is grimace.
c. All John did is grimace.
The English cleft is often said to involve an element (the immediate post-copula
element) encoding contrastive focus and the relative clause functioning as presupposition.
(Prince 1978, etc.) Lambrecht (2004:52) defines presupposition as the set of propositions
lexicogrammatically evoked in a sentence that the speaker assumes the hearer already
knows, or is ready to take for granted, at the time the sentence is uttered. Focus is the
semantic component of a pragmatically structured proposition whereby the assertion
differs from the presupposition. (Lambrecht 2004:213) Scholars have proposed many
versions of subclasses of focus and the most common one is to classify focus into two
subtypes according to whether or not the focused item is in contrast with other
alternatives in a limited set. Many terminologies have been used to refer to the
12RC is the abbreviation for relative clause. 13The modern day English clefts allow a range of categories to occur as the complement of the copula ‘be’ (Patten 2010:222), i.e. the position of NP in [It COP NP RC]. Prepositional and adverbial phrases are common in the post-copula position, as in ‘It was just here that we met,’ ‘It is in December that she’s coming;’ plus the gerund form of verb phrase in ‘It is writing the paper that he did last night.’
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noncontrastive type and the contrastive type focuses, such as rheme vs. kontrast (Vallduvi
and Vilkuna 1998), information focus vs. identification focus (Kiss 1998), informational
focus vs. operational focus (Roberts 1998) and informational focus vs. contrastive focus
(Xu 2002). This thesis adopts Xu’s terms of informational focus and contrastive focus to
highlight their functions.
Contrastive focus not only asserts what is different from its presupposition; it is also
associated with exhaustiveness and exclusiveness as proposed by Kiss (1998).
Accordingly, in (26), the post-copula NP ‘John’ is the focus complementing the
presupposition ‘someone grimaced.’ Moreover, ‘John’ is exhaustively the all and only
one exclusively that grimaced; therefore it is a contrastive focus.
Payne (1997: 280) suggests that cross-linguistically “a cleft construction is a type of
predicate nominal consisting of a noun phrase (NPi) and a relative clause (RC) whose
relativized NP is co-referrential with NPi;” and “clefts in many languages exhibit the
pattern [NPi [COP headless RCi]].” Within Payne’s cross-linguistic formulation of cleft,
the form that RC takes depends on what relativization strategies the language employs,
i.e. it could be nominalization, a participial clause, or a more prototypical relative clause.
According to Li and Thompson (1981: 579), nominalization is the equivalent
relativization strategy in Modern Chinese. They note that nominalization is a grammatical
process to turn a VP/S/NP into a noun14. In Construction Grammar, the nominalization
construction (NOM, in short) can be schematized as [VP/S/NP de][entity, situation,
or state].
14Thecopulashì as well as copular clauses cannot be nominalized, e.g. *[shì xuéshēng] de ‘[COP student] NOM.’
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Therefore, the equivalent of a headless RC in Chinese is a nominalization, and the
cleft construction can be schematized as [NPi COP NOMj][SEMi specificational
+contrastive SEMj], in which the post-copula NP is a nominalization marked by the
nominalizer de.
Patten (2010: 103) suggests that English cleft sentences belong to a family of
specificational copular sentences, in that they also involve the restrictive but non-
referential set in common with definite noun phrases, which is given, or recovered, in the
form of a relative clause. In other words, English cleft sentences are copular sentences in
which the post-copula NP is identified as the referential member for the restricted and
non-referential NP (in the form of relative clause). What is more, the restricted set
encompasses not just objects, but also actions, and properties, and therefore the
referential member encoded in the post-copula element can range over clauses, VPs as
well as NPs. (Patten 2010:261)
I have suggested the Chinese cleft construction also belongs to the family of
specificational copular sentences, because it also involves a restricted, non-referential set
denoted by the post-copula nominalization specified by a referential member encoded by
the subject NP. In terms of information structure, just like in English, the Chinese cleft
construction also encodes contrastive focus. The element immediately following the
copula is the contrastive focus asserting an idea that is presupposed. For example, in
(28a), the contrastive focus is the adverbial time phrase zuótiān ‘yesterday,’ and the
presupposition in the context is ‘she went to Shanghai at some time.’ Similarly, in (28b),
the contrastive focus is encoded in the element right following shì, e.g. zài jiā ‘at home.’
If a verb phrase directly follows the copula in a cleft sentence, as in (29), the contrastive
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focus can be the verb qù ‘go,’ the complement of the verb Shànghǎi, or the verbal phrase
as a whole qù Shànghǎi ‘go to Shanghai,’ depending on the context.
(28) a. 她 是 昨天 去 上海 的
tā shì zuótiān qù Shànghǎi de
SG3 COP yesterday go Shanghai NOM
‘It was yesterday that she went to Shanghai.’
b. 这个 是 在 家 做 的
zhè-ge shì zài jiā zuò de
this CL COP at home make NOM
‘It was at home that this was made.’
(29) 她 是 去 上海 的
tā shì qù Shànghǎi de
SG3 COP go Shanghai NOM
‘It was Shanghai that she went.’
I suggest examples (28a&b) and (29) are cleft sentences in Modern Chinese, as all
the examples have the form [NP COP NOM] (NOM= (ADV/TP/PP) VP/S/NP de) with
specificational+contrastive meaning.
However, some scholars e.g. Teng 1979; Zhu 1997; Huang 1998, distinguish (28b)
from (28a) and (29), because they believe that the Chinese cleft is not reversible (Huang
1998:211), whereas (28b) indicates equation and therefore the subject and the predicate
can be reversed ((30) is the reversed version of (28b)). They believe both (28b) and (30)
share the identical equational meaning and they are Chinese pseudo-cleft sentences.
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Here, reversibility is taken by these scholars as a criterion to distinguish pseudo-
cleft from cleft. However, it is always a problem if it is theoretically correct to use
linguistic reversibility to describe the linguistic aspects of analysis and of synthesis as it
may put unrealistic constraints on linguistic descriptions.
(30) 在 家 做 的 是 这个
zài jiā zuò de shì zhè-ge
at home make NOM COP this-CL
‘What was made at home is this one.’
I suggest all cleft and pseudo-cleft sentences are not equational but specificational,
and cannot be reversed. (28b) is distinct from (30) which is a pseudo-cleft in Modern
Chinese in that they have different forms and indicate different meaning. (28b) has the
form [NP COP NOM] and the post-copula PP zàijiā ‘at home’ is the contrastive focus.
However, (30) has the form [NOM COP NP] and the post-copula NP zhè-ge ‘this one’ is
in focus. Although the Chinese pseudo-cleft also includes exhaustiveness and
exclusiveness (Prince 1978; Higgins 1979; Quirk et al. 1985; etc.), e.g. zhè-ge ‘this one’
indicates exhaustiveness and exclusiveness in (30), and specificational member-class
relationship (Patten 2010), it has the form [NOM COP NP], which differs from the cleft
[NP COP NOM]. The Chinese pseudo-cleft is not the focus of this thesis.
I suggest that (28b) is a cleft rather than a pseudo-cleft because it has the form [NP
COP NOM], entails the specificational meaning and encodes contrastive focus. Both
(28a&b) are examples of the cleft construction [NPi COP NOMj][SEMi
specificational+contrastive SEMj], however, they are also different in terms of semantic
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referentiality and the optionality of the nominalizer de. In (28a), the subject of the
sentence tā is co-referential with the implicit subject of the nominalization, and the final
nominalizer de is optional. By contrast, in (28b) the subject of the sentence zhè-ge is co-
referential with the implicit object of the nominalization, and the nominalizer de is
obligatory. Therefore, within the constructional framework, I propose that the schematic
cleft construction has two subschemas: cleft-sbj as in (28a) and cleft-obj as in (28b). The
cleft-sbj involves subject-subject co-referentiality, and optionality of the nominalizer de.
The cleft-obj involves subject-object co-referentiality which means the verb in the
nominalization cannot be intransitive, moreover, the obligatory nominalizer. Therefore
the constructional schematic taxonomy of the Chinese cleft construction can be
elaborated as Figure 3.2:
Figure 3.2: The constructional schematic taxonomy of the Chinese cleft construction
3.5.2 An adverb analysis of shì in the so-called shì cleft sentence
Huang (1998) claims cleft sentences do not have the meaning of an ordinary copular
sentence: “they neither indicate equation or inclusion, nor do they predicate property as
ordinary copular sentences may do.” (Huang 1998: 213) Therefore, he argues that shì in
[NPiCOPNOMj]<‐‐>[SEMispeciPicational+contrastiveNOMj]
[NPiCOPNOMj]<‐‐>[SEMicleft‐objSEMj]
[NPiCOPNOMj]<‐‐>[SEMicleft‐sbjSEMj]
SchemaSubschema
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cleft sentences cannot be treated as a copula verb. He provides a syntactic analysis to
argue that the cleft shì has the status of an adverb. I will discuss this argument in detail in
the present section. According to Huang, (31) are cleft sentences with the final particle de
omitted.
(31) a. 小李 是 昨天 打了 小王
Xiáolǐ shì zuótiān dǎ-le Xiǎowáng
Xiaoli COP yesterday hit-PERF Xiaowang
‘It was yesterday that Xiaoli hit Xiaowang.’
b. 小李 昨天 是 打了 小王
Xiáolǐ zuótiān shì dǎ-le Xiǎowáng
Xiaoli yesterday COP hit-PERF Xiaowang
‘It was hitting Xiaowang that Xiaoli did yesterday.’
c. 是 小李 昨天 打了 小王
shì Xiáolǐ zuótiān dǎ-le Xiǎowáng
COP Xiaoli yesterday hit-PERF Xiaowang
‘It was Xiaowang that hit Xiaoli yesterday.’
Huang (1998: 213) claims that shì in cleft sentences has “the status of an adverb on
a par with negation and modals.” He argues, in English cleft sentences such as (32), what
immediately follows the copula is taken as the focus of the sentence ‘John,’ with the rest
of the sentence ‘that hit Bill’ backgrounded, i.e. presupposition. There is a structural
dependency between the focus and a position within the presupposed clause. The
structure of (32) is shown in (33).
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(32) It is John that hit Bill.
(33) It is Johni [that ti hit Bill]
Therefore, Huang says, there is a legitimate value-variable relationship between the
focus and the gap in the presupposition. However, he claims the situation with the
Chinese cleft is quite different. In Modern Chinese, “a cleft sentence differs from a non-
cleft only in the presence vs. absence of the focus indicator shì. There is no overt
dislocation of the focus.” (Huang 1998:214) Example (34) is a non-cleft declarative
version of (31):
(34) 小李 昨天 打了 小王
Xiáolǐ zuótiān dǎ-le Xiǎowáng
Xiaoli yesterday hit-PERF Xiaowang
‘Xiaoli hit Xiaowang yesterday.’
Huang suggests the simplest way of looking at Chinese cleft formation is to say that
it inserts the marker shì directly in front of the constituent in focus, as exemplified in (31).
Chinese cleft sentences, “unlike their English counterparts, involve neither structural
dependency, nor the value-variable relation between the focus and the presupposition.”
(Huang 1998: 205) He further claims that treating the cleft shì as a copula verb on a par
with ordinary copula shì or the pseudo-cleft shì as in (28b) is both semantically
implausible and syntactically problematic. Semantically, cleft sentences like (31) do not
indicate equation, identification, inclusion or predicative property. Syntactically, one
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important restriction on the cleft formation is that no post-verbal phrase may be clefted,
e.g. Xiǎowáng in (31), therefore (35) is ungrammatical.
(35) *小李 昨天 打了 是 小王
Xiáolǐ zuótiān dǎ-le shì Xiǎowáng
Xiaoli yesterday hit-PERF COP Xiaowang
‘It was Xiaowang whom Xiaowang hit yesterday.’
If the cleft shì is an adverb, since the position of an adverb, e.g. negation, modals,
time adverbials, in Chinese is pre-verbal, “it is of course the case that shì can never occur
post-verbally between a verb and its complement.” (Huang 1998: 215)
Huang also maintains that the cleft shì may enter into scope relations15 with
negation and modals. In (36), following Huang, shì is glossed as FO (focus operator).
(36) a.小李 是 明天 不 去
Xiáolǐ shì míngtiān bú qù
Xiaoli FO tomorrow NEG go
‘It is tomorrow that Xiaoli will not go.’
b. 小李 不 是 明天 去
Xiáolǐ bú shì míngtiān qù
Xiaoli NEG FO tomorrow go
‘It is not tomorrow that Xiaoli will go.’
15 The General Scope Principle (Kroch 1974: 145) suggests: “if within a simplex sentence there are operators with the surface word order X Y Z…, then the operators are indexed in order of appearance, giving X1 Y1 Z1…, and a scope marker is established as follows: [X1’ Y1’ Z1’…] where X is a quantifier of type X’.”
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c. 是 小李 可能 明天 去
shì Xiáolǐ kěnéng míngtiān qù
FO Xiaoli possibly tomorrow go
‘It is Xiaoli who will possibly go tomorrow.’
d. 可能 小李 是 明天 去
kěnéng Xiáolǐ shì míngtiān qù
possibly Xiaoli FO tomorrow go
‘Possibly it is tomorrow that Xiaoli will go.’
According to Huang, (36) shows the focus operator shì, the negation operator bù
and the modal operator kěnéng enter into scope relations with each other in free order.
The fact that shì may enter into scope relations with negation and modals, also with other
adverbs suggests shì is simply another such quantificational adverb which has the
property of bearing scope. (Huang 1998: 216)
Finally, Huang suggests that although the cleft shì has the status of an adverb, it is
closely related to the copula verb shì used in copular sentences including the pseudo-cleft
shì. He points out that verbal phrases such as yòng lì ‘use force’ in (37a) can function
adverbially in (37b):
(37) a. 她 用了 力了
tā yòng -le lì le
SG3 use-PERF force CRS
‘She has used force.’
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b. 她 用 力 打 小王
tā yòng lì dǎ Xiǎowáng
SG3 use force hit Xiaowang
‘She hit Xiaowang with force (forcefully).’
Similarly, shì is a copula verb in copular sentences, but in cleft sentences, it
functions as a focus operator and has the status of an adverb.
In the following I will demonstrate that Huang’s arguments on cleft shì being an
adverb fail to stand up on further scrutiny. Instead, shì is systematically a copula verb in
these sentences. As I have shown in section 3.5.1, sentences like (31) are examples of the
cleft-sbj [NPi COP NOMj][SEMi cleft-sbj SEMj], in which the subject NP is co-
referential with the subject of the nominalization, therefore it involves the semantic co-
reference. Furthermore, it entails the specificational plus contrastive meaning with the
referential subject specifying the non-referential but restricted set encoded by the post-
copula nominalization, and hence it encodes a legitimate value-variable relation. In fact,
as I will show in the next section, the examples in (31) are instances of the cleft-sbj with
the optional sentence final nominalizer de.
First, Huang points out that no post-verbal phrase may be clefted, as in (35).
However, many linguists including Zhang and Fang (1996) point out that in Chinese, not
only can adverbs not separate the verb and its complement in Chinese, no verb with an
unrelated argument structure can occur in a verbal phrase between the verb and its
complement as well, e.g. *dǎ chī Xiǎowáng ‘hit eat Xiaowang.’ Following the general
constraint, as a verb, shì cannot occur between the verb and its object in (35).
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Second, Huang claims cleft shì may enter into scope relations with negation,
modals, and quantificational adverbs in free order (see 36), thus shì is simply another
such adverb that has the property of bearing scope. However, examples in (39) show that,
if we substitute shì in (36) with a regular verb such as zhīdào ‘to know,’ the
grammaticality of the sentences holds.
(39) a.小李 知道 明天 不 去
Xiáolǐ know míngtiān bú qù
Xiaoli know tomorrow NEG go
‘Xiaoli knows that (he) will not go tomorrow.’
b. 小李 不 知道 明天 去
Xiáolǐ bú know míngtiān qù
Xiaoli NEG know tomorrow go
‘Xiaoli does not know that (he) will go tomorrow.’
c. 知道 小李 可能 明天 去
zhidao Xiáolǐ kěnéng míngtiān qù
know Xiaoli possibly tomorrow go
‘(someone) knows Xiaoli will possibly go tomorrow.’
d. 可能 小李 知道 明天 去
kěnéng Xiáolǐ zhidao míngtiān qù
possibly Xiaoli know tomorrow go
‘Possibly Xiaoli know that (he) will go tomorrow.’
Verbs are generally not considered as operators (unless they serve as auxiliaries)
and do not enter scope relations with operators. The fact that shì shows up in one
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sentence with negation or modal does not necessarily mean that it bears scope relations
with them. It could still be a verb, like zhīdào ‘to know’ in (39).
Finally, the scope phenomenon of the cleft shì that is considered by Huang to be
like an adverbial verbal phrase such as yòng lì ‘use force’ in yòng lì dǎ Xiǎowáng ‘hit
him with force (forcefully)’ as in (37) is called into question by (40). Note that the
sentence in (40) shows that the same verb yòng in the same position may actually be the
verb of a sentence that has a serial-verb construction. It then follows that verbal phrase
yòng lì in (37) is not used adverbially but may be the verb in a serial-verb construction.
Consequently, the evidence to support the claim that shì is a verb in copular sentences,
but an adverb in the cleft is questionable.
(40) 她 用了 很大 的 力 打 小王
tā yòng -le hěn dà de lì dǎ Xiǎowáng
SG3 use-PERF very heavy REL force hit Xiaowang
‘She has used heavy force to hit Xiaowang.’
In light of the data in (38-40), it has become clear that none of the arguments for
treating shì as an adverbial focus operator shows that it is uniquely adverbial. It follows
then that shì can be analyzed as being systematically a copula verb. Moreover, the adverb
analysis of shì in the cleft implies the simplex structure [NP ADV VP (PTCL)] that
mainly indicates a transitory temporal process rather than a non-transitory state or
situation. However, as I have pointed out in 3.5.1, the cleft construction indicates
specificational non-transitory states or situations. Accordingly the adverb analysis is not
consistent with the semantic nature of the cleft. I will elaborate this point in 3.5.3.
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3.5.3 My analysis of Chinese cleft sentences
The examples in (41) lay bare the function of shì as a non-inflectional invariant verb in
connecting two non-transitory situations. In the sentences of (41a&b) a transitory process
qù ‘go’ marked by an adverb dōu ‘all,’ can be negated by either negator, bù or méiyou.
However, preceding the copula shì, only one negator bù is possible.
(41) a. 我们 没有 都 去
wǒmen méiyǒu dōu qù
PL1 NEG all go
‘Not all of us have gone.’
b. 我们 不 都 去
wǒmen bù dōu qù
PL1 NEG all go
‘Not all of us will go/went.’
c. *我们 没有 是 去
wǒmen méiyǒu shì qù
PL1 NEG COP go
d. 我们 不 是 去 (的)
wǒmen bú shì qù (de)
PL1 NEG COP go (NOM)
‘We are not those who will go/went.’
This is so because the Chinese méiyǒu is a negator of a process in terms of its
temporal structure. However, the Chinese bù negates a non-transitory state. For example,
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in (42), none of the adjectives, hǎo ‘good,’ cōngming ‘smart,’ or gāo ‘tall,’ indicating a
non-transitory state can be negated by méiyǒu.
(42) a. 他 不 好, 不 聪明, 不 高
tā bù hǎo , bù cōngming, bù gāo
SG3 NEG good, NEG smart, NEG tall
‘He is not good, not smart, or not tall.’
b. 他*没有 聪明, *没有 高
tā *méiyǒu cōngming, *méiyǒu gāo
SG3 NEG smart, NEG tall
Such a pattern in negation confirms my hypothesis that the cleft construction
inherits the syntactic and semantic properties from the schematic copular construction,
and it denotes a specificational non-transitory situation or state rather than a transitory
process.
The examples in (43) and (44) illustrate the cleft-sbj with the explicit nominalizer
de and the cleft-sbj with the implicit16 nominalizer de respectively.
(43) 她 是 昨天 到达 北京 的
tā shì zuótiān dàodá Běijīng de
SG3 COP yesterday arrive Beijing NOM
‘It was yesterday that she arrived in Beijing.’ (CCL)
16 Since the nominalizer de in the cleft-sbj is optional, it can be at present or not in a cleft-sbj sentence. I treat de at the present as explicit, and de not at the present as implicit.
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(44) 我 是 到 北京 学习 来了
wǒ shì dào Běijīng xuéxí lái-le
SG1 COP to Beijing study come-CRS
‘It was to Beijing that I have come to study.’ (CCL)
In example (43), the post-copula contrastive focus zuótiān ‘yesterday’ asserts the
exhaustiveness and exclusiveness with respect to the presupposition ‘she arrived in
Beijing someday’ in the context. In (44), the contrastive focus, the PP dào Běijīng ‘to
Beijing,’ is asserted of the presupposition ‘I came somewhere to study.’ The form of (44)
is just like (43) except that de is implicit. I hypothesize that (43) and (44) are cleft-sbj
sentences with the final nominalizer de optional.
I found 2760 tokens of the cleft-sbj sentences in CCL Modern Chinese Corpus, of
which 2122 (76.9%) share the form [PRO shì (ADV/TP/PP) VP de], and 638 (23.1%) are
those in which the final nominalizer de is not present. This shows that the rate of the
nominalizer de being implicit is far less than that of those with it. According to the
frequency, [PRO shì (ADV/TP/PP) VP de] is the prototypical structure of the cleft-sbj.
The prototypical cleft-sbj involves the subject as the doer of the event encoded by the
nominalization, e.g. (43)-(44).
A copular sentence in (45a) can be used grammatically only in a highly specific
context, i.e., speaking to a waiter in a restaurant clarifying who has ordered what. It is
inconceivable that mǐfàn ‘rice’ serves a predicational function, as it is not a property of
human being. Therefore, it interprets only the specificational meaning, because a copula,
cross-linguistically, is observed to represent either predicational or specificational
function. It is, therefore, reasonable to consider (45a) to be a short form for a cleft-sbj
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sentence in (45b), in which only mǐfàn ‘rice,’ the contrastive focus, is kept after dropping
the entire presupposition, ‘something that I have ordered.’
(45) a. 我 是 米饭
wǒ shì mǐfàn
SG1 COP rice
‘?? I am rice.’
b. 我 是 点 米饭 的
wǒ shì diǎn mǐfàn de
SG1 COP order rice NOM
‘It is rice that I have ordered.’
The structurally ambiguous sentence in (46a) further illustrates this point. If we take
the head noun of the post-copula RC representing the restricted set, i.e., ‘she is the
daughter who was born last year,’ then the referential member tā ‘she’ in subject position
is a member of the set of the daughter who was born. But then where does the second
reading come from, as the seemingly common referential member of tā in (46a) can have
a mother reading?
(46) a. 她 是 去年 生 的 女儿
tā shì qùnián shēng de nǚ’er
SG3 COP last year bear REL daughter
‘She is the daughter who was born last year.’
‘It was last year that she gave birth to a daughter.’
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b. 她 是 去年 生 的 女儿 的
tā shì qùnián shēng de nǚ’er de
SG3 COP last year bear REL daughter NOM
‘It was last year that she gave birth to a daughter.’
The sentence in (46b) with the nominalizer de at present unambiguously gives the
mother reading. Example (46b) with the form [PRO shì RC NP de] is obviously a cleft-
sbj sentence, in which the subject tā ‘she’ represents the referential member of the non-
referential, but restricted set of ‘the one who gave birth to a daughter last year’ encoded
by the nominalization. The immediate post-copula contrastive focus qùnián ‘last year’ is
asserted of the presupposition ‘she gave birth to a daughter some time.’ The sentence in
(46a) is structurally ambiguous only because the nominalizer de in (46b) is optional, thus
appearing in more or less the same fashion as the one in (46a). This ambiguity has further
substantiated my hypothesis that the Chinese cleft-sbj has a [NP COP NOM] form and
the ambiguity is caused by the optionality of the nominalizer de. Therefore, shì must be a
copula verb and similarly the examples Huang provides in (31) are simply cleft-sbj
sentences with the implicit final nominalizer de.
3.6 Conclusion
This chapter has given discussions of the concepts of ‘copula’ and “cleft.” I argue that shì
in Modern Chinese is systematically an invariant non-inflectional copula verb, not a
particle, a focus marker, a focus operator or an adverb in the cleft construction. The
copular construction can be schematized as [(XPi) COP XPj][SEMi copulative
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linking SEMj], in which although the XP can be non-nominal, its prototypical form is
[NP COP NP]. I have proposed a constructional schematic taxonomy of the prototypical
Chinese copular construction (see Figure 3.1).
I argue that the cleft construction [NPi COP NOMj][SEMi specificational
+contrastive SEMj] is a subschema of the copular construction, which inherits the
attributes of the schematic copular construction. Figure 3.3 summarizes the form and
meaning properties of the copular and cleft construction, and provides a comparison
between them.
the copular construction the cleft construction
Figure 3.3: A comparison of the schematic copular construction and the cleft construction
(form in the upper box and meaning in lower box. SY: syntax PH: phonology SM:
semantics PR: pragmatics DI: discourse)
•SY:[NPCOPNP]
• SM:speciPicational• PR:topic(pre‐COPNP);informationalfocus(post‐COPNP)
•SY:[NPCOPNOM](NOM=(ADV/TP/PP)VP/S/NPde)
• SM:speciPicational• PR:topic(pre‐COPNP);contrastivefocus(theimmediatepost‐COPelement)
• DI:contrastive
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The cleft construction indicates the specificational plus contrastive meaning, and
the element immediately following shì is the contrastive focus. Under the schematic cleft
construction, there are the cleft-sbj and cleft-obj. The cleft-obj involves subject-object
co-referentiality and the obligatory presence of nominalizer; whereas the cleft-sbj
involves subject-subject co-referentiality, and the optionality of the nominalizer de,
which overrides the general optionality of de, as nominalization is a construction from
which [NP COP NOM] inherits. The result of my search of cleft-sbj sentences in CCL
Modern Chinese Corpus reveals that in actual discourse less than a quarter of them have
the implicit nominalizer de, and [PRO shì (ADV/TP/PP) VP de] is the prototype. This
chapter also calls into question the validity of the adverbial treatment of shì in some cleft-
sbj sentences, as none of the arguments given so far shows it is uniquely
characteristically adverbial. The primary semantic function of the cleft-sbj is to indicate a
non-transitory class-membership rather than a transitory process that the adverbial
analysis may imply. Furthermore, I have demonstrated the extra mileage provided by the
copula hypothesis as it can provide a natural explanation of the somewhat idiosyncratic
sentences in (45) and (46).
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Chapter 4
The Constructionalization of Shì in Chinese: from a
Demonstrative Pronoun to a Copula
4.1 Introduction
As indicated in Chapter 3, the copula shì occurs in a copular sentence, a special type of
declarative sentence traditionally termed “pànduàn jù” in Chinese linguistic literature,
which indicates definition, people’s belief or judgment. It is used to link the subject of a
sentence with a predicate (see Chapter 3 section 3.2 for details). For example:
(1) [他 是 老师]
[tā shì lǎoshī]
[NP COP NP]
3SG COP teacher
‘He is a teacher.’
Example (1) has the syntactic structure [NP COP NP]: tā is the non-agent subject,
lǎoshī is the nominal predicate, and the copula shì links them together. The prototypical
function of the copula in Modern Chinese is to link two NPs. However it is generally
known that copular sentences in Old Chinese (500 BCE - 200 CE) need not contain any
copula verbs, as exemplified in (2) and (3):
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(2) [仲尼 日 月 也]
[zhòngní rì yuè yě]
[NP NP yě]
zhongni sun moon PTCL
‘Zhongni (is) the sun and the moon.’ Lunyu (400 BCE)
(3) [政 者 正 也17]
[zhèng zhě zhèng yě]
[NP VP yě]
politics NOM upright PTCL
‘Governors (are) upright.’ Lunyu (400 BCE)
Examples (2) and (3) are typical copular sentences in Old Chinese. In this chapter, I
call them classical copular sentences (CCS, hereafter). Example (2) has the syntactic
structure [NP NP yě], zhòngní is the subject, rì yuè is the nominal predicate, yě is a
sentence final particle. There is no copula verb connecting the subject and the nominal
predicate in either (2) or (3).
Also found in Old Chinese texts are sentences of the topic-comment construction
(Li and Thompson 1977) [XPi [Sj]][Topici [COMMENTj]], such as examples (4)
and (5). In (4) and (5), the comment clause appears to be a CCS. Scholars (Wang 1937;
Feng 1993; Shi and Li 2001; etc.) generally agree that shì in (4) and (5) is a
demonstrative pronoun functioning as an anaphor referring to the preceding topic phrase.
17Adjectives in Chinese share the properties with verbs, i.e. they take aspectual inflections. I treat adjectives as stative verbs. (See Chapter 3 section 3.2 for details)
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Accordingly, example (4) has the syntactic structure [NP [shì NP yě]] with the
demonstrative pronoun shì referring to the topic NP fù yú guì and there is no linking verb
between the subject shì and the nominal predicate rén zhī suǒ yù. Example (5) has the
syntactic structure [S [shì VP yě]].
(4) [富 与 贵 [是 人 之 所 欲 也]]
[fù yú guì [shì rén zhī suǒ yù yě]]
[NP [shì NP yě]]
wealth and nobility this people ASSOC thing want PTCL
‘Wealth and nobility, these (are) the things people want. Lunyu (400 BCE)
(5) [如弃 德 不 让
[rú qì dé bú rang
if abandon moral NEG yield
[是 废 先 君 之 举 也]]
[shì fèi xiān jūn zhī jǔ yě]]
this abolish former emperor ASSOC behavior PTCL
[S [shì VP yě]]
‘If (you) abandon the moral and don’t yield, it (is) abolishing the behavior
of the former emperor.’ Zhuozhuan (500 BCE)
There are still some CCS occurrences in Modern Chinese that share the structure of
(2) (3) and the comment part of (4) and (5), but they are confined to the casual spoken
language. For example:
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(6) [今天 星 期 五]
[jīntiān xīngqī wǔ]
[NP NP ]
today Friday
‘Today is Friday.’
(7) [她 长 头发]
[tā cháng tóufà]
[NP NP ]
3SG long hair
‘She (has) long hair.’
Except in oral spoken language, the copular construction in standard Modern
Chinese requires the copula shì, linking the subject and the predicate as exemplified in
(1).
Regarding the formation and development of the copula shì, many scholars have
proposed theories and hypotheses, but to date, this issue has not been adequately
accounted for. This chapter, aims at the emergence and development of the copula shì
and the copular construction, arguing that, in light of Traugott and Trousdale’s theory of
constructionalization (2011), the emergence of the copular construction involved
reanalysis of the topic-comment construction [(XP)18[shì XP yě]] (as in examples (4) and
(5)), whereby the demonstrative pronoun shì that functioned as the anaphor referring to
the topic phrase evolved into the copula shì through a process of analogization modeling
the structure of the full transitive verb wéi: [XP wéi XP] in Old Chinese. This chapter
focuses on the two conditions in which the grammatical constructionalization took place:
18 In this chapter, XP=NP/VP/S. I will explain this more in section 4.3.
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1) the semantic relatedness between the original construction and the target outcome; 2)
the morphosyntactic contexts in which the change was enabled. Furthermore, I argue the
demonstrative pronoun shì changed into a copula in the process of the emergence of the
copular construction. This is a functional change from discourse anaphoric to syntactic
linking function, along with the decrease of the instances of CCS, such as are exemplified
in (2) and (3). Section 4.2 outlines the major previous studies on the development of shì.
Section 4.3 presents a detailed analysis on the constructionalization process of shì and the
copular construction. Section 4.4 is a typological analysis regarding the issue and the
conclusion.
4.2 Previous research on shì
The most frequently cited theory on the development of shì is proposed by Wang (1937).
He argues that copula shì developed from the demonstrative pronoun shì (as in examples
(4) and (5)) and it did not occur until late Western Han (206 BCE - 25 CE) and early
Eastern Han (25 CE - 220). Hong (1958) challenges Wang’s theory and proposes that the
copula shì evolved from the affirmative response shì, as exemplified in (8), which
functions to affirm a proposition.
(8) 曰:「是 鲁 孔丘 與?」曰:「是 也」
yuē shì lǔ kǒngqiū yú yuē shì yě
say this Lu Kongqiu Q say right PTCL
‘(Is) this person Kongqiu from the state of Lu? Right.’ Lunyu (400 BCE)
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Yen (1986) further develops Hong’s theory and suggests that the use of shì as a
copula came from the function as an affirmative particle. Because of the contrastive
meanings of fēi ‘wrong’ and shì ‘right,’ speakers started to use shì--an affirmative
particle, in the sentential environment where the nominal negator fēi appeared. By Yen’s
theory, the development of shì may be analyzed as an analogic change:
fēi ‘wrong’:: shì ‘right’ = fēi ‘negative’ :: shì ‘Y’
Y= ‘affirmative’
(9) 如 以 鬼 非 死 人, 則 其 信 杜 伯 非 也
rú yǐ guǐ fēi sǐ rén , zé qí xìn dùbó fēi yě
if think ghost NEG dead people, then their belief DuBo wrong PTCL
‘If they think that ghosts are not dead people, then their belief in the story
of Du Bo is wrong.’
如 以 鬼 是 死 人, 則 其 薄 葬 非 也
rú yǐ guǐ shì sǐ rén , zé qí bó zàng fēi yě
if think ghost AFF dead people, then their simple funeral wrong PTCL
‘If they think that ghosts are dead people, then their advocacy of simple
funerals is wrong.’ Lunheng (100 CE)
As example (9) shows, both fēi and shì appeared in the same sentential environment
with opposite meanings. This is evidence for the link between fēi as a negative particle
and shì as an affirmative particle. According to Yen, the use of fēi was replaced by bú shì,
where bú is a negative particle and shì is an affirmative particle, in a later era. Yen
indicates that the use of bú shì instead of fēi was a crucial point for shì to be reanalyzed
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as a copula. However, there is no evidence to show that bù shì evolved from or replaced
fēi. Bù in Old Chinese was used to negate verbs, verbal phrases and predicates, as in bù
zhī ‘not know,’ bù wéi ‘not do,’ etc. Therefore, bù occurring preceding shì gave the
evidence that shì was part of the predicate. One of the earliest occurrences of bù shì is
found in Zuozhuan (500 BCE), in which bù negated the nominal predicate shì guò ‘this
fault’ in which shì is a demonstrative followed by a noun:
(10) 文 王 所 以 造 周 不 是 過 也
wén wáng suǒ yì zào zhōu bù shì guò yě
King Wen it use build Zhou NEG this fault PTCL
‘That King of Wen used it to build the state of Zhou (is) not a fault.’
Zuozhuan (500 BCE)
Feng (1993) also disagrees with Yen and argues that the evidence from the pair of
sentences containing shì as the antonym of fēi is not robust enough to be the triggering
experience for speakers. He found 10 sentences in Lunheng (100 CE), in which shì was
used as a copula but only one of them can be considered as a pair with fēi. The reason is
that in Old Chinese, fēi could only negate noun phrases, as in [fēi NP], while shì could
occur in a number of environments, such as [shì N], [shì NP], [shì VP], [shì S], etc. Feng
discovered that among 23 [ADV shì XP] sentences from Lunheng, again only one pair of
fēi and shì was found. The asymmetry of the distribution of affirmative shì and negative
fēi shows Yen’s hypothesis is untenable. Feng furthermore pointed out that Yen’s theory
cannot explain the case that in the string [shì ADV XP], shì can only be interpreted as a
demonstrative pronoun, see example (11), in which zì is the adverb following shì, but in
the string [ADV shì XP], shì can be interpreted as a copula modified by an adverb, see
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example (12). Therefore Feng concludes, “although it is possible that under the
analogical change, the affirmative shì might have developed from antonym usage with
fēi, in fact copula shì does not seem to have been developed from the affirmative particle
shì.” (Feng 1993:282).
(11) 仲尼 曰:是 圣人 仆 也, 是 自 埋 于 民
zhòng ní yuē : shì shengrén pú yě , shì zì mái yú mín
Zhongni say this saints servant PTCL, this self bury in people
‘Zhongni said, this (is) the saint’s servant, he buries himself in people.’
Zhuangzi (300 BCE)
(12) 审 是 掌 之 罪 也
shěn shì Zhǎng zhī zuì yě
really is Zhang ASSOC fault PTCL
‘(It) really is Zhang’s fault.’ Lunheng (100 CE)
Feng also finds problems in Wang’s theory and the most serious problem, as he
points out, is: if copular sentences such as CCS in examples (2)-(5) contained no copula,
there would have been no place for shì to move into and function as a copula between the
subject and the predicate in those sentences; as shì evolved into a copula, the
demonstrative pronoun would have to have changed its position from the subject position
to a position a copula usually occurs in. Feng proposes that there was an overt pause
obligatorily occurring in CCS between the subject and predicate in Old Chinese [NP
pause XP yě]. Similarly there was a pause obligatorily occurring in the topic-comment
structure between the topic phrase and the comment sentence [XP pause [shì XP]]. This
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is the reason that an interjectional particle and adverb could emerge between the subject
and the predicate in a CCS or between the topic phrase and the comment sentence in a
topic-comment structure. He argues that the demonstrative pronoun shì had changed its
lexical category from a [+n] to a [+v] because of the weakening of the emphatic function
of the demonstrative pronoun shì with the lack of necessity for the pause and because
adverbs pushed the shì to merge with the pause and the anaphoric function of shì became
opaque; and finally shì was reanalyzed as a copula and the pause disappeared.
However, Feng’s theory also has some serious difficulties. First, it is difficult to
determine whether the prosodic pause existed in Old Chinese, as we do not possess audio
records. Second, the lack of necessity for the pause that weakened the emphatic function
of the demonstrative pronoun does not necessarily change the demonstrative pronoun into
a verb. Furthermore, adverbs should not have the power to push shì to merge with the
pause and to become a verb. It was speakers who produced, and hearers who interpreted.
Adverbs in Old Chinese systematically occurred in the position preceding a predicate,
either a nominal predicate or a verbal predicate. The adverbs that occurred preceding and
modifying shì are evidence showing that shì was no longer a demonstrative pronoun, but
already part of the predicate, a copula.
Shi and Li (2001) argue that copula shì evolving from the demonstrative pronoun
underwent a process of analogy, modeling regular transitive verbs in Old Chinese. They
claimed, following Kiparsky (1992), that the holistic structural property of a language at
a certain period brings about grammaticalization through a process of analogy. They
suggested that Old Chinese had already developed standard SVO word order, and the
frequent occurrence [NP shì NP] is the morphosyntactic context in which shì was
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influenced by and fitting into the extant transitive verb pattern. However, it is obvious
that the copula shì in Modern Chinese differs from the standard transitive verbs in some
syntactically significant ways (see details in Chapter 1 section 1.2.1); if it underwent the
analogical process modeling SVO structure, then why did it not develop into a full-
fledged transitive verb? Furthermore, Shi and Li treat the structure [NP shì NP] as the
morphosyntactic contexts in which the change is enabled. As will be discussed in 4.3.2,
the earliest evidence showing that shì was already a copula is found in Mengzi (300
BCE), which was long before the frequent occurrences of the structure [NP shì NP]
(around 500 CE)19. Therefore, to suggest [NP shì NP] as the onset context for the
grammaticalization of shì is problematic. Moreover, Li and Shi fail to identify the
specific context that triggered this change and what the semantic relatedness between the
demonstrative pronoun shì and the copula shì is remains a mystery.
4.3 The development of shì
In this section, I turn to my own analysis of the development of shì.
4.3.1 A syntactic analysis of the classical copular sentence (CCS) in Old Chinese
Examples (2) and (3) in section 4.1 are instances of CCS in Old Chinese appearing as
[NP NP yě] and [NP VP yě]. Example (13) is another instance of CCS this time with the
structure [NP S yě].
19 I will show statistical evidence for this point in 4.3.3.
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(13) [陳 良 楚 产 也]
[chén liáng chǔ chǎn yě]
[NP S yě]
Chenliang Chu produce PTCL
‘Chengliang (is) the product of Chu (was born in Chu).’ Mengzi (300 BCE)
Therefore the structure of CCS can be summarized as [NP NP/VP/S yě]. If
XP=NP/VP/S, then the syntactic structure of CCS in Old Chinese can be schematized as
[NP XP yě]. The declarative sentence’s final particle yě was required in CCS in Old
Chinese and some linguists (e.g. Shi and Li 2001) consider it as the grammatical marker
for CCS in the period. However, not all CCS in Old Chinese are marked by yě. Other
final particles such as yǐ and ér in declarative, zāi, hū and yú in questions also occurred in
this position, but yě is the most frequent one. It is more correct to say a declarative
sentence final particle was required in this type of copular sentences in Old Chinese.
Hereafter I use PTCL to represent sentence final declarative particles in structure. The
semantic relations in [NP XP PTCL] between NP and XP are copulative linking.
Therefore, the CCS construction in Old Chinese can be schematized as:
[NPi XPj PTCL][SEMi (copulative linking) SEMj Declarative]
The copulative linking meaning of CCS includes specificational, i.e. examples (2)
and (13), and predicational, i.e. example (3). In (3), zhèng ‘being upright’ is a description
of the zhèngzhě ‘governors.’ As I have shown in the constructional schematic taxonomy
of the copular construction in Chapter 3, there are three subschemas under the schema of
the specificational copular construction: equational, specificational and
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specificational+contrastive. (see Chapter 3 section 3.4 for details) The specificational
CCS in Old Chinese has the meanings of equational or specificational. In (2), both of the
subject Zhòngní and the nominal predicate rì yuè ‘the sun and the moon’ are semantically
referential, and (2) is equational. In (13), Chéngliáng is the referential member of the
non-referential but restricted set of chǔ chǎn ‘the product of Chu.’ Example (13) encodes
a class-membership predication relation and it is specificational.
Now consider the topic-comment construction with a CCS as the comment part also
found in Old Chinese. As has been shown in section 4.1, example (4) is a sentence of the
topic-comment construction, the demonstrative pronoun shì functions as the anaphor
referring to the topic phrase fù yú guì ‘wealth and nobility.’ There is no linking verb
between the subject shì and the nominal predicate rén zhī suǒ yù ‘the things that people
want,’ and the final particle yě marks the comment part of (4) a CCS. The structure of (4)
is [NP [shì NP PTCL]], noticing the topic in (4) is a complex NP. Example (5) is also a
sentence of topic-comment construction and the topic in (5) is a conditional clause; in the
comment part the demonstrative pronoun shì functions as the anaphor referring to the
topic part rú qì dé bú ràng ‘if (you) abandon the moral and don’t yield’ and there is no
linking verb between the subject shì and the VP predicate fèi xiān jūn zhī jǔ ‘abolish the
behavior of the former emperor.’ Again, the final particle yě marks the comment part of
the sentence as a CCS. The structure of (5) is [S [shì VP PTCL]]. Examples (14)-(18) are
additional examples of the topic-comment construction with a CCS occurring in its
comment part.
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(14) [吾 無 行 而 不 與 二 三 子 者 [是 丘 也]]
[wù wú xíng ér bù yú èr sān zǐ zhě [shì qiū yě]]
[NP [shì NP yě]]
SG1 NEG behavior CONN NEG tell 2PL NOM this Qiu PTCL
‘I don’t have things that I cannot tell you guys, this (is) me.’
Lunyu (400 BCE)
(15) [既 欲 其 生 又 欲 其 死 [是 惑 也]]
[jì yù qí shēng yòu yù qí sǐ [shì huò yě]]
[S [shì VP yě]]
not only want 3SG live but also want 3SG die this confuse PTCL
‘Not only to want him to live, but also to want him to die, this (is)
confusing.’ Lunyu (400 BCE)
(16) [无 父 无 君 [是 禽兽 也]]
[wú fù wú jūn [shì qínshòu yě]]
[VP [shì NP yě]]
NEG father NEG lord this animal PTCL
‘Those who have no fathers and no lords, they (are) animals.’
Lunyu (400 BCE)
(17) 曰: [ [是 鲁 孔丘 與]]?
yuē [ [shì Lú Kǒngqiū yú]]
[(NP) [shì NP yú]]
say this Lu Kongqiu Q(PTCL)
‘(Changju) said, ‘(Someone), (is) this Kongqiu from the state of Lu?’’
Lunyu (400 BCE)
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(18) [然 而 不 胜 者
[rán ér bú shèng zhě
this but NEG win NOM
[是 天 时 不 如 地 利 也]]
[shì tiān shí bù rú dì lì yě]]
this heaven time NEG compare to terrain advantage PTCL
[NP [shì S yě]]
‘Those who did this but not won, this (is) that its heaven time could not
compete with the terrain advantage.’ Mengzi (300 BCE)
Examples (4)-(5) and (14)-(18) show that the form of this particular topic-comment
construction can be summarized as [(XP) [shì XP PTCL]]. In the following discussion, I
will discuss the meaning of this construction, and argue that the earliest copula shì
emerged from this construction, and it was the onset context for the copular construction
to change into being.
4.3.2 The constructionalization of the copula
4.3.2.1 The semantic relatedness between the demonstrative pronoun and the copula
As has been mentioned above, the semantic relations between the subject and the
predicate of CCS, see examples (2), (3) and (13), include specificational and
predicational meaning. In the topic-comment construction [(XP) [shì XP PTCL], since
the comment part of the structure is a CCS, the semantic relations between the subject,
the demonstrative pronoun shì, and the predicate XP are specificational and predicational
as well. For example, the CCS in (4) (14) and (16) are specificational, in (17) is
equational, and those in (5), (15) and (18) are predicational.
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As for the topic-comment construction, Li and Thompson (1981:95) suggest that
the relationship between the topic and the comment is wide open. That is to say, as long
as the comment expresses something about the topic in the perception of the speaker and
the hearer, the sentence will be meaningful. The demonstrative pronoun shì frequently
functions as the anaphor referring to the complex topic of the topic-comment
construction; therefore, it entails the semantics of the topic. In this case, the
demonstrative pronoun as the anaphor links the semantic meaning of the topic and the
predicate part of the comment. It is the demonstrative pronoun that has the predicational
or specificational relation with the predicate since they together form a CCS, however
since the demonstrative pronoun refers to the topic, therefore the topic is related to the
predicate of CCS in terms of the semantic relation of specificational and predicational.
Accordingly, the specific topic-comment sentences under discussion such as (4), (14) and
(16) are specificational, (17) is equational, and (5), (15) and (18) are predicational.
As I have shown in Chapter 3 section 3.3, in a copular sentence of Modern Chinese,
the semantic relationship between the subject and the predicate is copulative linking
include specificational and predicational meanings. From the above discussion, the
categories of the semantic relations between the subject and the predicate in a copular
structure of Modern Chinese appear to be parallel with the semantic relations between the
topic and the predicate of the comment in the structure [(XP) [shì XP PTCL] in Old
Chinese. Therefore, I conclude that when the demonstrative pronoun shì frequently
functioned as the anaphor referring to the topic, it also linked the semantic relations
between the topic and the predicate of the comment. This particular topic-comment
construction can be schematized as:
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[(XPi) [shì XPj PTCL]][Topici [COMMENT(Anaphor SEMj Declarative)]]
However, the semantic relations between the topic XP and the predicate XP in the
structure [(XP) [shì XP PTCL]] did not evidently show that the demonstrative pronoun
shì had been assigned the syntactic status as a copula. But as I will show in the next sub-
section, it gave the original semantic context for the demonstrative pronoun shì to be
construed as the semantic meaning of a copula, and the topic-comment construction to
convey the copulative linking meaning of a copular sentence. In fact, the syntactic
change, the analogization process modeling the structure of the verb wéi ‘to be,’
eventually speakers construed shì as the semantic meaning of a copula and the syntactic
property of a copula, which gave rise to the emergence of the copula shì.
4.3.2.2 The enabling context
In Old Chinese, shì as a demonstrative occurred in the specifier position of an NP,
exemplified as shì guò ‘this fault’ in (10). Shì also occurred as a demonstrative pronoun,
e.g. in example (19) shì appears in the object position of a VP yǒu shì:
(19) [国 之 有 是 多 矣]
[guó zhī yǒu shì duō yǐ]
[NP VP yǐ]
state ASSOC have this many PTCL
‘The cases that state having this (is) numerous.’ Zuozhuan (500 BCE)
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At the same period, as has been shown in 3.1, it began to function as an anaphor
occurring at the subject position of the comment part of a topic-comment construction
which has the form [(XP) [shì XP PTCL]], see examples (14)-(18).
In the Old Chinese topic-comment construction, the demonstrative pronoun shì
functioned as the anaphor frequently referring to a complex topic, e.g. a clause, a VP, or a
complex NP. If the topic phrase was a simple NP (a pronoun or a proper noun), then the
anaphor demonstrative pronoun shì normally did not occur; it then would be a CCS, e.g.
(2). Therefore, when the anaphoric demonstrative pronoun shì frequently occurred in the
topic-comment construction [(XP) [shì XP PTCL]], it created the semantic relation
between the topic phrase XP and the predicate of the comment XP, and gave rise to a
robust semantic context for constructionalization, that is, the demonstrative pronoun shì
changed into a copula verb. I hypothesize that the original and onset context that enabled
the constructionalization is:
[(XPi) [shì XPj PTCL]][Topici [Anaphor SEMj Declarative]]
In the following discussion, I will give evidence to show that the earliest copula
emerged from the string [(XP) [shì XP PTCL]], and that this is the original and
morphosyntactic context that enabled the constructionalization of shì.
As has been mentioned in section 4.2, when adverbs occurred preceding and
modifying shì, shì was no longer a demonstrative pronoun, but already part of the
predicate, already a copula. I argue that the earliest [ADV+shì] combination emerged
from the context of [(XP) [shì XP PTCL]]. Example (20) is found in Mengzi, in which the
adverb jūn ‘totally’ occurred preceding shì:
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(20) 公都子 问 曰: 「 [钧 是 人 也]
gōng dōu zǐ wèn yuē : [jūn shì rén yě]
[ADV shì NP yě]
Gongdouzi ask said: totally COP people PTCL
[或 为 大 人]
[huò wéi dà rén]
[NP wéi NP ]
some be big people
[或 为 小 人], 何 也?」
[huò wéi xiǎo rén], hé yě
[NP wéi NP ]
some be small people, why PTCL
‘Gongdouzi asked, ‘(they) are totally people; some of them are good
people, some of them are bad people; why is that?’’ Mengzi (300 BCE)
In example (20), the adverb jūn occurring preceding and modifying shì shows that
shì was already part of the predicate, a copula. In (20), the subject is unspecified, the VP
predicate consists of the copula shì that is modified by the adverb jūn, and the nominal
predicate rén, and yě is the final declarative marker. It entails the copulative linking
meaning, specifically predicational meaning as ‘being human’ is a characteristic of the
unspecified subject ‘all of us.’
If the adverb jūn did not occur in the position, the first sentence of example (20)
would have been (21), which had the structure [(XP) [shì XP PTCL]].
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(21) 公都子 问 曰:「[ [是 人 也]]
gōng dōu zǐ wèn yuē : [ [shì rén yě]]
[(XP) [shì NP yě]]
Gongdouzi ask said: these people PTCL,…’
Example (21) is a sentence of the topic-comment structure [(XP) [shì NP PTCL]],
in which the topic is unspecified, shì is the demonstrative pronoun20, the subject of the
comment sentence referring to the unspecified topic, NP rén ‘people’ is the nominal
predicate of the comment sentence, and yě is the final declarative maker. It entails the
predicational meaning between the unspecified topic and NP rén ‘people.’ Example (20)
is the earliest occurrence in which [ADV+shì] is found in the Old Chinese text in CCL
Classical Chinese Corpus. I suggest that shì in (20) is the earliest copula we can find in
Old Chinese texts, and the earliest copula emerged from the string [(XP) [shì XP PTCL]].
Examples (22) and (23) are another pair of examples showing that the copula verb
emerged from the context of [(XP) [shì XP PTCL]]. Example (22) is found in Mozi (BCE
400), in which the adverb bì ‘definitely’ occurring preceding and modifying shì shows
that shì was already part of the predicate, a copula. In (22), the subject is bú xiào zǐ ‘an
unworthy son,’ the VP predicate consists of the copula shì that is modified by the adverb
bì, and the VP yuàn qí qīn ‘grudge his parents,’ and yǐ is the sentence final declarative
maker. The semantics of (22) is predicational as the verbal predicate ‘to grudge his
parents’ is a characteristic of the subject ‘an unworthy son.’ If the adverb bì did not occur
20 According to the context, shì in [[shì] [rén yě]] can only be a demonstrative pronoun, but not a demonstrative. It cannot be analyzed as [[shì rén] yě] ‘this person.’
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in the position, example (22) would have been (23), which again had the structure [(XP)
[shì XP PTCL]].
(22) [不 孝 子 必 是 怨 其 亲 矣]
[bú xiào zǐ bì shì yuàn qí qīn yǐ]
[NP adv shì VP yǐ]
not worthy son definitely COP grudge his parents PTCL
‘An unworthy son definitely is to grudge his parents.’ Mozi (400 BCE)
(23) [不 孝 子 [是 怨 其 亲 矣]]
[bú xiào zǐ [shì yuàn qí qīn yǐ]]
[NP [shì VP yǐ]]
not worthy son this grudge his parents PTCL
Example (23) is a sentence of the topic-comment structure [(XP) [shì XP PTCL]],
in which the topic is an NP bú xiào zǐ ‘not worthy son,’ shì is the demonstrative pronoun,
the subject of the comment sentence, and VP yuàn qí qīn ‘grudge his parents’ is the
verbal predicate of the comment sentence. (23) entails the predicational relation between
the topic bú xiào zǐ ‘an unworthy son’ and VP yuàn qí qīn ‘grudge his parents.’
The examples above strongly support that [ADV+shì] emerged in the context of
[(XP) [shì NP PTCL]], which also gives evidence to suggest that the copula verb shì
emerged from the same context. Therefore it is reasonable to claim that [(XP) [shì XP
PTCL]] is the onset mophosyntactic context enabling the emergence of the copular shì
and the constructionalization of the copular construction that can be schematized as:
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(24) [(XPi) [shì XPj PTCL]][Topici [Anaphor SEMj Declarative]]
>
[(XPi) COP XPj (PTCL)][SEMi copulative linking SEMj (Declarative)]
4.3.2.3 The mechanism of the constructionalization of shì
In the previous sub-section, I have suggested that the copula emerged from the context of
[(XP) [shì XP PTCL]], in this sub-section, I am going to answer the questions: why and
how did the change come into being? I argue that the analogy and analogization are the
motivation and mechanism of the constructionalization of shì.
As has been shown in Chapter 2, reanalysis refers to the replacement of old
structures by new ones. Analogy, by contrast, refers to the attraction of extant forms to
already existing constructions (Hopper and Traugott 2003:64). Analogy concerns pattern
match with other members of a category and the focus is on similarity. Analogization
(analogical change) as one of the mechanisms occurs due to being influenced by and
fitting into extant patterns. When analogization happens, it is simultaneously reanalysis.
Shi and Li (2001) argue that the copula shì evolving from the demonstrative
pronoun underwent a process of analogy, modeling the standard SVO word order in Old
Chinese, and the frequent occurrence [NP shì NP] is the morphosyntactic context in
which shì was influenced by and fitted into the extant transitive verb pattern. I agree that
the copula shì evolving from the demonstrative pronoun underwent a process of analogy.
However, there is no evidence that frequent occurrence preceded reanalysis, but the
“critical” contexts (Diewald's 2002) for the change are attested in the data.
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I suggest that the “critical” context for the change to be ready to occur is [(XP) [shì
XP PTCL]] in which the demonstrative pronoun shì began to change, as I have shown in
3.2.2. That is to say [NP shì NP] is the later stage of the change. I hypothesize that the
demonstrative pronoun shì in [(XP) [shì XP PTCL]] started to change into the copula
verb through the process of analogization, modeling the structure of the extant full
transitive verb wéi. In Old Chinese, wéi was a verb with a variety of meanings including
both ‘to do’ and ‘to be’ in English, and had the grammatical structure [(XP) wéi XP]. For
example:
(25) [为 政 以 德],譬如 北 辰
[wéi zhèng yì dé] pìrú běi chén
[V NP V NP]
do politics use virtue like north star
‘Doing politics with virtues is like the north star.’ Lunyu (400 BCE)
(26) [民 为 贵], 君 为 轻
[mín wéi guì] jūn wéi qīng
[NP V VP]
people be precious, lords be unimportant
‘People are precious, and lords are less important.’ Mengzi (300 BCE)
(27) [克 己 复 礼 为 仁]
[kè jǐ fù lǐ wéi rén]
[VP VP V NP]
control self restore ritual be benevolence
‘Controlling self and restoring rituals are benevolence.’ Lunyu (400 BCE)
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Examples (25)-(27) show the major usages of the verb wéi in Old Chinese. In
example (25) the verb wéi has the semantic meanings of ‘to do.’ In (26) and (27), the
verb wéi is the verb ‘to be.’ Example (26) has the structure [NP V VP] with the
predicational meaning, and example (27) has [VP VP V NP], in which the paralleled two
VPs kè jǐ ‘control self’ and fù lǐ ‘restore rituals’make up the subject of the sentence, and
the VP predicate consists of the verb wéi and NP rén ‘benevolence.’ It entails the
predicational meaning: ‘controlling self and restoring rituals’ is the characteristics that
describe the nominal predicate ‘benevolence.’ A number of similar examples are found in
Old Chinese texts:
(28) [孝 弟 也 者 为 其 仁 之 本 與]
[xiào tì yě zhě wéi qí rén zhī běn yú]
[NP V NP yú]
filial piety PTCL NOM be his benevolence ASSOC root PTCL
‘The behaviors of filial piety are the root of the benevolence.’
Lunyu (400 BCE)
(29) [中国 于 四 海 內 则 在 東南 为 阳 ]
[zhōngguó yú sì hǎi nèi zé zài dōngnán wéi yang]
[S V NP ]
central state at four seas in then at southeast be Yang
‘The central state in the world being in southeast is at the side of Yang.’
Shiji (100 BCE)
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(30) [凡 人 之 欲 为 善 者 为 性 惡 也]
[fán rén zhī yù wéi shàn zhě wéi xìng è yě]
[NP V S yě]
all people ASSOC want do good NOM be nature evil PTCL
‘The reason that all the people want to do good things is that their nature
is evil.’ Xunzi (200 BCE)
(31) 曰:「[为 仲由]」
yuē [wéi zhòngyóu]
[V NP ]
say be Zhongyou
‘Zilu said, ‘(I) am Zhongyou.’’ Lunyu (400 BCE)
The verb wéi in examples (28)-(31) is ‘to be.’ The structure of (28) is [NP wéi NP
yú]] having the semantics of canonical specificational, the structure of (29) is [S wéi NP]
with the predicational meaning, the structure of (30) is [NP wéi S PTCL] entailing
predicational meaning, and (31) has the structure [wéi NP] with the subject not specified,
which is equational. Consequently, the sentences of (26)-(31) can be structured as [(XP)
wéi XP PTCL], which entails the linking meaning of specificational or predicational. The
construction of wéi ‘to be’ can be schematized as:
[(XPi) wéi XPj (PTCL)][(SEMi) BE SEMj (Declarative)]
This schematized construction of wéi ‘to be’ appears similar to the onset context of
the constructionalization of shì. These paralleled constructional contexts make it easy for
the analogical process to occur:
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[(XPi) [shì XPj PTCL]][(Topici) [Anaphor SEMj Declarative]]
[(XPi) wéi XPj (PTCL)][(SEMi) BE SEMj (Declarative)]
Now, let’s take a look at the following examples occurring in Lunyu and Mengzi:
(32) a. 长沮 曰:「[夫 执 舆 者 为 誰?]」
chángjū yuē : [fū zhí yú zhě wéi shéi ]
[ NP V NP ]
changju said: PTCL drive wagon NOM be who
‘Changju said, ‘who is the one who drives the wagon?’’
b. 子路曰:「[为 孔丘 ]」
zǐlù yuē : [wéi kǒngqiū]
[V NP ]
zilu said: be Kongqiu
‘Zilu said, ‘It is Kongqiu.’
c. 曰:「[ [是 鲁 孔 丘 與]]?」
yuē : [ [shì lǔ kǒng qiū yú]]
[(NP) [NP NP yú]]
[ V NP yú]
said: this Lu Kongqiu Q(PTCL)
Changju said, ‘(Is) this Kongqiu from the state of Lu?’
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d.曰:「是 也.」
yuē : shì yě
said: right PTCL
‘Zilu said, ‘Right.’’ Lunyu (400 BCE)
Example (32a) consists of the structure [NP wéi NP] with the equational meaning;
in (32b), the subject does not occur, and the structure is [(NP) wéi NP] having the
semantics of equation. The verb wéi in both (32a&b) is the verb ‘to be.’ (32c) has the
structure [(NP) [shì NP yú]], in which the topic Kongqiu has been activated in the
previous discourse, and therefore does not occur; the demonstrative pronoun shì refers to
the unspecified topic and has the semantic relation of equation with the nominal predicate
of the comment sentence Lǔ Kǒngqiū ‘Kongqiu from the state of Lu,’ and the final
particle yú inherits question. The parallel form and meaning between (32b) and (32c) in
the cohesive discourse is obvious, which gives the appropriate context for analogization
to occur. I propose that the construction of (32b) is the analogical model for the
demonstrative pronoun shì to develop into a copula verb: [(NPi) wéi NPj] [(SEMi)
equational SEMj] was analogized to the emergence of [(NPi) shì NPj][(SEMi)
equational SEMj].
Based on analogization, (32c) was analyzed as a topic-comment construction [(NPi)
[shì NPj yú]][(Topici) [Anaphor SEMj yú]] as it has been shown above, however, it
could be reanalyzed (re-bracketing and re-categorizing) as [(NPi) shì NPj][(SEMi)
equational SEMj] by means of analogization modeling [(NPi) wéi NPj][(SEMi)
equational SEMj]. As for the meaning, shì was originally the anaphor linking the
semantic relation of equation between the unspecified topic and the predicate of the
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comment sentence; however, it could have been reanalyzed as the copula ‘to be’ with the
meaning of anaphoric reference bleached but strengthened as equational between the
unspecified subject and the nominal predicate.
Example (33a) from Mengzi was not ambiguous any more because of the adverb jūn
‘totally’ preceding and modifying shì, which shows that shì was no longer a
demonstrative pronoun, but already a verb. Therefore, (33a) has the structure [shì NP
PTCL], and shì is the copula verb linking the predicational meaning between the
unspecified subject and the nominal predicate.
(33) a.公都子 问 曰: 「[钧 是 人 也]
gōng dōu zǐ wèn yuē : [jūn shì rén yě]
[ADV COP NP yě]
Gongdouzi ask said: totally COP people PTCL
b. [或 为 大 人 ]
[huò wéi dà rén]
[NP V NP ]
some be big people
c. [或 为 小 人], 何 也?」
[huò wéi xiǎo rén], hé yě
[NP V NP ]
some be small people, why PTCL
‘Gongdouzi asked, ‘(they) are people; some of them are good people,
some of them are bad people; why is that?’’ Mengzi (300 BCE)
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Based on the above discussion, the analogical process of the constructionalization
can be schematized as: the topic-comment construction [(XPi) [shì XPj
PTCL]][(Topici) [Anaphor SEMj Declarative]] was reanalyzed as the copular
construction [(XPi) COP XPj (PTCL)][(SEMi) copulative linking SEMj
(Declarative)], in which the demonstrative pronoun shì changed into the copula shì
through the analogicalization process, modeling the construction [(XPi) wéi XPj
(PTCL)][(SEMi) BE SEMj (Declarative)]. As has been shown above, wéi as a full
verb in Old Chinese had functions other than ‘to be’ including ‘to do,’ however, as wéi
‘to be’ was the analogical source, shì ‘to be’ was the only product from analogization.
This also leads to the formal properties of the copula verb in Modern Chinese that are
sufficiently different from the classificatory verbs (see Chapter 1 section 1.2.1). The first
occurrences of the copular construction had the structure [(XP) COP XP PTCL]. Since its
emergence, the copular construction underwent host-class expansion, e.g. [NP COP NP]
became more and more frequent (see 4.3.3), and syntactic and semantic expansions, e.g.
the cleft construction (see Chapter 3 section 3.5 and Chapter 5).
4.3.3 Statistical evidence for constructionalization of shì and further expansion
In this sub-section, I give the statistical evidence showing constructionalization of the
copula shì and further expansion. For the statistical counting, I have chosen four major
books as the data: two Old Chinese books Lunyu (400 BCE) and Mengzi (300 BCE), one
book at the transition between Old Chinese and Middle Chinese Shiji (100 BCE)21 and
one Middle Chinese book Shishuoxinyu (500 CE). For each of the four books, I count the
21AsforShiji,duetothetimelimitation,IonlyfocusonthepartofLiezhuaninShiji.
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total tokens of the string [(XP) shì XP (PTCL)], and the tokens of a number of variables
(see following discussion for details), which together give the evidence of the process of
constructionalization.
4.3.3.1 The increase of adverbs preceding shì
In section 4.2 and 4.3.2.2, I pointed out that adverbs occurring preceding and modifying
shì in the string [(XP) shì XP (PTCL)] show that shì was no longer a demonstrative
pronoun, but already a copula, and that [(XP) [shì XP (PTCL)]] was the onset
morphosyntactic context enabling the constructionalization of shì.
Along with the constructionalization of shì, the adverbs preceding and modifying
shì became more and more frequent, which means shì as the copula verb with the
specificational or predicational meaning of the copular construction became more and
more entrenched. According to the data, the earliest adverb occurring in this environment
is jūn ‘totally’ as it showed up twice as in jūn shì in Mengzi. The other frequent adverbs
that occurred in the environment are bì, dìng ‘definitely,’ jiē, bìng ‘totally,’ zì ‘self,’ guǒ
‘as expected,’ etc.
without adv. with adv. Total
Lunyu (BCE 400) 13 (100%) 0 (0%) 13
Mengzi (BCE 300) 29 (93.5%) 2 (6.5%) 31
Shiji (part) (BCE 100) 27 (93%) 2 (7%) 29
Shishuoxinyu (CE 500) 66 (72%) 26 (28%) 92
Table 4.1: The adverb distribution of preceding shì in the string [(XP) shì XP (PTCL)]
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Table 4.1 shows in Lunyu, there were no adverbs occurring in the position of
preceding shì, however, in the Middle Chinese text Shishuoxinyu, 28% of the occurrences
had an adverb preceding and modifying shì. The token frequency means shì as the copula
verb became more and more entrenched.
4.3.3.2 The decrease of sentence final particles
As I have shown in 4.3.1, the final particle, e.g., yě, yǐ and ér in declarative, zāi , hū and
yú in questions, was required in CCS, [NP XP PTCL], in Old Chinese. In the string [(XP)
shì XP (PTCL)] along with the constructionalization of the copula shì, the declarative
sentence final particle became less and less frequent.
with PTCL without PTCL Total
Lunyu (400 BCE) 13 (100%) 0 (0%) 13
Mengzi (300 BCE) 30 (97%) 1 (3%) 31
Shiji (part) (100 BCE) 26 (90%) 3 (10%) 29
Shishuoxinyu (500 CE) 5 (5%) 87 (95%) 92
Table 4.2: The final particle distribution in the string [(XP) shì XP (PTCL)]
Table 4.2 shows in Lunyu, 100% occurrences with the structure [(XP) shì XP
(PTCL)] had the declarative sentence final particle, however, in the Middle Chinese text
shìshuoxinyu, 95% of the occurrences did not have the final particle. It shows loss of the
final particle by 500 CE. Since the final declarative particle in a CCS determines the
copulative reading, the decrease of the occurrences of final particle in the string [(XP) shì
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XP (PTCL)] gives evidence that the newly developed shì functions as a copula. The
token frequency shows the new construction [(XP) shì XP (PTCL)] started to be fixed
and frozen, and more and more frequent.
4.3.3.3 The decrease of the complex topic
As has been mentioned above, the pre-copula XP in the string [(XP) shì XP (PTCL)]
could be a complex NP, VP, S or optional. Along with the process of the
constructionalization, more and more simple NPs (pronouns and proper nouns) occurred
in the pre-copula position, and eventually the pre-copula complex phrases gave way to
simple NPs, and simple NPs became the most frequent, which gives evidence of the host-
class expansion and syntactic expansion in the constructionalization process of the
copula.
complex pre-copula phrase
(including unspecified)
simple NP Total
Lunyu (400 BCE) 13 (100%) 0 (0%) 13
Mengzi (300 BCE) 31 (100%) 0 (0%) 31
Shiji (part) (100 BCE) 24 (83%) 5 (17%) 29
Shishuoxinyu (500 CE) 53 (58%) 39 (42%) 92
Table 4.3: The pre-copula complex phrase and simple NP distribution in the string
[(XP) shì XP (PTCL)]
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Table 4.3 shows in Lunyu and Mengzi, all the strings occurring at the pre-copula
position of [(XP) shì XP (PTCL)] were complex, however, in Shìshuoxinyu, almost half
had changed into simple NPs. They show shì used as the anaphor referring the complex
topic became less frequent, while the function of linking verb indicating copulative
linking meaning between two NPs became more frequent. These data present the type
frequency and give evidence of the host-class expansion and syntactic expansion.
As for the simple NP, most of them were pronouns, such as cǐ ‘this,’ wǒ ‘I,’ bǐ
‘he/they,’ and proper nouns, such as names of people and places. One thing that has to be
pointed out is that in more than 90% of the occurrences where simple NPs occurred in the
pre-copula position of [(XP) shì XP (PTCL)], the post-copula XP was also an NP. This
shows the structure [NP shì NP], in which shì was already a standard copula, as [NP COP
NP] is the prototypical structure of the copular construction in Modern Chinese (see
Chapter 3 section3.1 for details).
4.3.3.4 The increase of [NP COP NP]
As has been mentioned in 4.3.1, the predicate XP of the comment sentence in the topic-
comment construction [(XP) [shì XP (PTCL)]] could be NP, VP or S in Old Chinese.
Along with the constructionalization, more and more NP occurred in the post-copula
position. Shi and Li (2001) counted the distribution of NP and VP as the predicate:
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NP as the predicate VP as the predicate
Zuozhuan (500 BCE) 22% 78%
Lunyu (400 BCE) 48% 52%
Xunzi (200 BCE) 78% 22%
Table 4.4: The NP/VP distribution of the second XP in the string [(XP) shì XP (PTCL)]
Table 4.4 shows in Zuozhuan, VP was the major predicate of the last XP in the
comment [(XP) shì XP (PTCL)], however the token frequency shows NP became much
more frequent than VP at this slot of the construction in Xunzi. As shown in 4.3.3.2,
along with the constructionalization, the final declarative particle gradually decreased,
more simple NPs occurred in the pre-copula position, and the structure [NP COP NP]
became more and more frequent and fixed. As [NP COP NP] is the prototypical structure
of the copular construction in Modern Chinese, the frequency of [NP COP NP] shows shì
had frozen into a standard non-inflectional copula verb.
4.3.3.5 The competition between shì and wéi
Over time, speakers came to prefer the copula shì ‘to be’ which originally developed
from wéi ‘to be’ through the process of analogization, and eventually wéi ‘to be’ gave
way to shì ‘to be.’ Here I counted all the tokens of wéi, shì, and wéi ‘to be,’ shì ‘to be’ in
the four books. As for how to determine the copula shì ‘to be,’ I use the adverbs and the
simple NPs (pronouns and proper nouns) that occurred preceding shì as the criteria to
determine shì ‘to be.’
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Table 4.5 shows in Lunyu, 8.4% of verb wéi was used as the linking verb ‘to be’22,
but none of the shì was used as ‘to be.’ However in Shishuoxinyu, 24% of the shì was
used as a copula ‘to be,’ but the verb wéi which was used as ‘to be’ had reduced to 6.8%.
This shows shì ‘to be’ significantly outnumbered wéi ‘to be’ in Middle Chinese, and wéi
‘to be’ eventually gave way to shì ‘to be.’
‘to be’ wéi Total wéi ‘to be’ shì Total shì
Lunyu (400 BCE) 15 (8.4%) 179 0 (0%) 60
Mengzi (300 BCE) 27 (5.2%) 517 2(0.8%) 258
Shiji (part) (100 BCE) 376(5.1%) 7374 6 (0.6%) 999
Shishuoxinyu (500 CE) 45 (6.8%) 651 64 (24%) 265
Table 4.5: The competition between shì ‘to be’ and wéi ‘to be’ I.
Table 4.6, from the perspective of the proportion of shì ‘to be’ and wéi ‘to be’ in all
‘to be’s also shows in the competition between ‘to be’ wéi and ‘to be’ shì, wéi ‘to be’
eventually gave way to shì ‘to be.’
22I distinguish wéi ‘to do’ and wéi ‘to be’ by looking at their meanings in the contexts.
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‘to be’ wéi ‘to be’ shì Total ‘to be’
Lunyu (400 BCE) 15 (100%) 0 (0%) 15
Mengzi (300 BCE) 27 (93%) 2 (7%) 29
Shiji (part) (100 BCE) 376 (98%) 6 (2%) 382
Shishuoxinyu (500 CE) 45 (41%) 64 (59%) 109
Table 4.6: The competition between shì ‘to be’ and wéi ‘to be’ II.
Starting with Shiji, along with the process in which wéi ‘to be’ started to give way
to shì ‘to be,’ wéi ‘to be’ also became specialized. One significant pattern started to occur
frequently, that is wéi...suǒ... For example:
(34) 大月氏 王 已 为 胡 所 杀
dà yuè zhī wáng yǐ wéi hú suǒ shā
Dayuezhi King already be barbarians whom kill
King of Dayuezhi has been the one whom the barbarians killed.
Shiji (100 BCE)
Example (34) shows the pattern of wéi...suǒ... 23, in which wéi can still be analyzed
as ‘to be,’ linking two NPs ‘King of Dayuezhi’ and ‘the one whom Hu killed,’ and suǒ is
a pronoun equivalent to English ‘the one.’
23Otherlinguists,e.g.Tang1988,considerthepatterntobeoneofthepassivestructuresinOldandMiddleChinese.
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wéi...suǒ... wéi ‘to be’ Total wéi
Lunyu (400 BCE) 0 (0%) 15 (8.4%) 179
Mengzi (300 BCE) 0 (0%) 27 (5.2%) 517
Shiji (part) (100 BCE) 52 (0.7%) 376 (5.1%) 7374
Shishuoxinyu (500 CE) 25 (3.8%) 45 (6.8%) 651
Table 4.7: The distribution of wéi...suǒ...
Table 7 shows the occurrences of wéi...suǒ... increased significantly from Shiji to
Shishuoxinyu, which means wéi ‘to be’ was confined to the specific pattern, and was left
the other occurrences of this usage to shì ‘to be.’ This is another fact that shì ‘to be’
outnumbered wéi ‘to be,’ and eventually became the standard Chinese copula.
This subsection presents the evidence showing the process in which the
demonstrative pronoun shì was gradually constructionalized into a copula.
4.4 Typology and Conclusion
Heine and Kuteva (2002) point out that a demonstrative or demonstrative pronoun
changing into a copula is a common grammaticalization process cross-linguistically. For
example, in Egyptian, pw ‘this’ was a proximal demonstrative, and it changed into a
copula verb.
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(35) Egyptian (Gardiner 1957: 103ff)
Nwn pw jt ncrw
Nun this father gods
‘The father of the gods is Nun.’
Other languages such as Hebrew, Wappo, Swahili, and Palestinian Arabic also have
a copula that developed from demonstratives or demonstrative pronouns. In a number of
pidgin and creole languages, demonstrative pronouns also appear to have given rise to
copulas. Heine and Kuteva (2002) suggest that demonstratives in their pronominal uses
may give rise to various copula functions, such as existential, identifying and qualifying
functions. Diessel (1999) classifies demonstratives cross-linguistically into four
categories: pronominal, adnominal, adverbial, and identificational. In Diessel’s
terminology, the demonstrative pronoun described in this chapter is treated as an
identificational demonstrative that functions as anaphor. He discusses demonstrative-to-
copula path-of-evolution and maintains that the reanalysis of demonstratives as copulas
originates from a topic-comment construction. Hengeveld (1992:250) observes that this
evolution “goes hand in hand with a reinterpretation of the theme-clause construction as a
subject-predicate construction.” This remark serves as a good characterization of the
development of the copular construction that emerged with the reanalysis of the topic-
comment construction as a subject-predicate construction.
This chapter gives a detailed account for the formation and development of the
copula shì. I argue that the onset morphosyntactic context that enabled the
constructionalization was the Old Chinese topic-comment construction [(XPi) [shì XPj
PTCL]][(Topici) [Anaphor SEMj Declarative]]. The demonstrative pronoun shì
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functioned as an anaphor referring to the topic and the semantic/pragmatic relation was
copulative linking, specifically specificational or predicational, between the topic and the
predicate of the comment. Together the two elements enabled reanalysis as a construction
linked by a copula verb ‘to be.’ The demonstrative pronoun shì was gradually
constructionalized into a copula through the analogization process modeling the
construction of the verb wéi ‘to be’ [(XPi) wéi XPj (PTCL)][(SEMi) BE SEMj
(Declarative)] and reanalysis (rebracketing), and the copular construction [(XPi) COP
XPj (PTCL)][(SEMi) copulative linking SEMj (Declarative)] came into being. There
is evidence showing the process and further expansion: the adverbs preceding and
modifying shì became more and more frequent; more and more simple NPs occurred in
the pre-copula position showing the host-class expansion; more and more NP occurred in
the post-copula position; the declarative final sentence particle yě became less and less
frequent; and shì ‘to be’ which was originally patterned like wéi ‘to be’ through the
process of analogization became more and more competitive, and eventually wéi ‘to be’
gave way to the copula shì ‘to be.’
Along with the constructionaliztion of the copula, the occurrence of the CCS in Old
Chinese, such as examples (2) that had the syntactic structure [NP XP PTCL], became
less frequent. This also shows that the sentence typology of the CCS had shifted from
emphasis on clause boundary: two adjacent phrases NP and XP along with a sentence
final particle marking it as a copular sentence to emphasis on clause cohesion, with a
central linking verb and two phrases NP and XP (eventually two NPs) succeeding and
following it as in Modern Chinese [NP shì NP].
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Chapter 5
The Constructionalization of the Cleft Construction
5.1 Introduction
Examples in (1) present two instances of the cleft construction in Modern Chinese. A
cleft sentence in Chinese is a special copular sentence in which the copula shì links a
subject NP and a nominal predicate, a nominalization NOM=[XP de] (XP=NP/VP/S)
marked by the nominalizer de: [NP COP NOM]. The cleft construction has two
subschemas: cleft-sbj and cleft-obj. The cleft-sbj involves subject-subject semantic co-
referentiality and the optionality of the nominalizer de, e.g. in (1a) the subject of the
sentence wǒ ‘I’ is co-referential with the implicit subject of the nominalization qùnián lái
měiguó de, and the nominalizer de is optional; whereas a cleft-obj involves subject-
object co-referentiality and the obligatory nominalizer, e.g. (1b).
(1) a. 我 是 去年 来 美国 (的)
wǒ shì qùnián lái měiguó (de)
SG1 COP last year come US (NOM)
‘It was last year that I came to the US.’
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b. 这个 是 昨天 做 的
zhè-ge shì zuótiān zuò de
this CL COP yesterday make NOM
‘It was yesterday that this was made.’
The cleft construction entails the specificational meaning plus the immediate post-
copula element, e.g., qùnián ‘last year’ in (1a), signaling the contrastive focus indicating
the presupposition implied in the rest of the sentence, e.g. I came to the US some time.
The two subschemas cleft-sbj and cleft-obj also differ in meaning in that they have
different semantic co-referentiality. (See above, and Chapter 3 sections 3.5 for details)
The copula shì is generally treated to signal contrastive focus in cleft sentences. In
the history of Chinese, it is widely accepted, e.g. Wang 1937; Feng 1993; Pulleyblank
1995; Shi and Li 2001, that shì evolved from a demonstrative pronoun to a copula verb in
Old Chinese. In the previous chapter, I argued that the copula shì underwent the process
of constructionalization from a demonstrative pronoun in Old Chinese, and the copular
construction was constructionalized from the topic-comment construction in Old Chinese
when the demonstrative pronoun shì occurred at the subject position of the comment
clause functioning as an anaphor referring to the topic. In some fixed expressions of
Modern Chinese as I showed in chapter 1, shì retains this anaphoric function from Old
Chinese.
Many scholars hold that after shì had changed into a copula, it changed into a focus
marker through a process of further grammaticalization in early Middle Chinese around
500 CE (Shi and Li 2001; Dong 2004; etc.). This chapter, however, argues that it is not
that shì was further grammaticalized into a focus marker, but the new cleft construction
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emerged, in which shì remained a copula verb but expanded its syntactic function, i.e.
signaling contrastive focus. This emergence took place in late Middle Chinese (700-1000
CE).
This chapter aims to address how and why the cleft construction came into being in
the history of Chinese. In the light of the theory of constructionalization, I argue that the
development of the cleft construction in Chinese involved reanalysis in terms of syntactic
form and semantic-pragmatic function. Section 5.2 outlines the historical emergence of
the cleft construction. Section 5.3 provides a detailed analysis of how and why the cleft
construction was constructionalized. Section 5.5 is the conclusion.
5.2 The emergence of the cleft construction
In this section, I will give a detailed analysis of the historical emergence of the cleft
construction. Three facets will be focused on in the analysis: shì being crystalized as a
standard copula in early Middle Chinese, the occurrence of the nominalization [XP de] in
late Middle Chinese, and the emergence of the combination of the copula and the
nominalization, i.e. the sequence of [NP COP XP de] in late Middle Chinese.
5.2.1 Shì: the copula in early Middle Chinese (200 CE - 600 CE)
In the previous chapter I argued that the onset mophosyntactic context that enabled the
change from a demonstrative pronoun to a copula was the topic-comment construction, in
which the demonstrative pronoun shì occurred at the subject position of the comment
clause functioning as an anaphor referring to the topic. This gave rise to the copulative
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linking semantic relation between the topic and the predicate of the comment that made
the two elements ready to be linked by a copula verb ‘to be.’ Through the analogization
process modeling the construction of Old Chinese verb wéi ‘to be,’ and reanalysis, the
demonstrative pronoun shì was gradually constructionalized into a copula, and the
copular construction came into being. The trajectory of the development of the copular
construction can be schematized as follows, where XP=NP/VP/S:
[(XPi) [shì XPj PTCL]][Topici [Anaphor SEMj Declarative]]
>
[(XPi) COP XPj (PTCL)][(SEMi) copulative linking SEMj (Declarative)]
>
[NPi COP NPj][SEMi copulative linking SEMj]
Example (2) is the earliest occurrence in which shì appear to have the status of a
copula verb:
(2) 公都子 问 曰: 「 [钧 是 人 也]
gōng dōu zǐ wèn yuē : [jūn shì rén yě]
[ADV shì NP yě]
Gongdouzi ask said: totally COP people PTCL
[或 为 大 人]
[huò wéi dà rén]
[NP wéi NP ]
some be big people
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[或 为 小 人], 何 也?」
[huò wéi xiǎo rén], hé yě
[NP wéi NP ]
some be small people, why PTCL
‘Gongdouzi asked, ‘(they) are totally people; some of them are good
people, some of them are bad people; why is that?’’ Mengzi (300 BCE)
After the emergence of the copular construction, the occurrences of [NP COP NP]
became more and more frequent, and the structure [NP COP NP] was conventionalized as
the prototype for the copular construction. In the early Middle Chinese book,
Shishuoxinyu (500 CE), 73% of the copular sentences are [NP COP NP] (48 occurrences
out of 66 attested copular sentences), as exemplified in (3):
(3) a. [此 三人 並 是 高才 ]
[cǐ sān rén bìng shì gāo cái]
[NP ADV COP NP ]
this three people totally COP high talent
‘These three people are totally of great talent.’ Shishuoxinyu (500 CE)
b. [我 是 李府君 亲]
[wǒ shì lǐfǔjūn qīn]
[NP COP NP ]
SG1 COP Lifujun relative
‘I am Lifunjun’s relative.’ Shishuoxinyu (500 CE)
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With the emergence of the copular construction, the copulative linking meanings of
predicational and specificational were also crystalized. (3a) is a predicational copular
sentence with the post-copula predicate providing a property ‘high talent’ for the subject
‘these three people;’ whereas (3b) is a specificational sentence, in which the non-
referential but restricted set ‘Lifujun’s relative’ is specified by the referential member the
subject ‘I.’ The examples in (3) encode predicate informational focus in terms of
information structure, that is to say the subject usually encodes referential given
information, generally a topic, and the post-copula predicate as a whole is the
informational focus indicating non-referential new information.
Other than the occurrences of [NP COP NP], in Shishuoxinyu 27% (16 out of 66) of
the copular sentences are [(XP) COP XP], as exemplified in (4a) [NP COP VP] and (4b)
[NP COP S]. These occurrences are not as frequent as [NP COP NP], but they co-occur
with [NP COP NP] all the way through the history of Chinese, as found in Modern
Chinese in (4c) [S COP NP]. Semantically, (4a&b) are predicational, and (4c) is
specificational.
(4) a. [此 是 有 情 痴]
[cǐ shì yǒu qíng chī]
[NP COP VP ]
this COP have love devoted
‘This is having devoted love.’ Shishuoxinyu (500 CE)
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b. [此 是 屋 下 架 屋 耳]
[cǐ shì wū xià jià wū ěr]
[NP COP S ]
this COP house under build house just
‘This is just building a house under another house.’
Shishuoxinyu (500 CE)
c. [中国人 能够 了解 篮球 是 我 的 梦想 ]
[zhōngguórén nénggòu liǎojiě lánqiú shì wǒ de mèngxiǎng]
[S COP NP ]
Chinese people can understand basketball COP SG1 ASSOC dream
‘That Chinese people can understand basketball is my dream.’
Yao Ming, my dream my world (2004)
Shi and Li (2001) argue that shì in (4a&b) was already further grammaticalized into
a focus marker (FM). It marks VP yǒu qíng chī ‘have love devoted’ in (4a) and NP wū
xià ‘house under’ in (4b) as contrastive focus (exclusiveness and exhausiveness). Their
evidence for this claim is: in Early Middle Chinese, shì started to occur frequently
preceding the interrogative wh-words, such as shéi ‘who’, hé ‘what,’ as in (5).
(5) 是誰 教 汝?
shì-shéi jiāo rǔ
FM-who teach you
‘Who taught you?’ Beiqishu (530 CE)
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Following Heine and Reh (1984), Shi and Li argue that wh-words have embedded
focus, and the focus is often marked. In Old Chinese, the focus was marked by OV word
order. A standard verb phrase in Old Chinese had the word order of VO, e.g. fèi zhī ‘get
rid of it,’ xiǎng zhī ‘enjoy it’ (Zuozhuan, 400 BCE); whereas a verb phrase consisting of a
wh-word, e.g. shéi ‘who,’ hé ‘what,’ employed the word order of OV, e.g. shéi lì ‘whom
crown,’ hé rú ‘what like’ (Zuozhuan, 400 BCE). They claim that when shì changed into a
copula verb, due to its low transitivity, wh-words could only occur following shì. (Shi
and Li 2001:45) Consequently, the focus of the wh-words was no longer marked by word
order; instead, speakers chose shì to carry on this mission. According to Shi and Li
(2001:48), in early Middle Chinese around 500 CE, shì served as a focus marker for wh-
words and by analogy it started to mark other categorical elements immediately following
it as focus, e.g. NP in (4b), VP in (4a). Therefore, shì was further grammaticalized into a
focus marker in early Middle Chinese and has been in use all the way through nowadays.
As I have discussed above, in early Middle Chinese, with the emergence of the
copular construction, the copula shì, like all the verbs in Chinese as a VO language,
served to introduce the informational focus indicated by the post-verbal phrase. Since the
informational focus is unmarked in Chinese, the term “focus marker” used by Shi and Li
should refer to mark contrastive focus. The copula shì evolving into the copula in Old
Chinese underwent a process of analogization, modeling after the construction of the Old
Chinese verb wéi ‘to be.’ In Old Chinese, although wh-words occurred preceding regular
transitive verbs, they systematically occurred following wéi ‘to be,’ i.e. zǐ wéi shéi ‘you
are whom (who are you)?’ (Lunyu, 400 BCE) Therefore, when copula shì came into
being, it occurred naturally preceding wh-words. At the same time, based on the
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frequency, shì started to mark the focus of wh-words, but it did not become to signal
contrastive focus as it is in Modern Chinese cleft sentences. In other words, if Shi and
Li’s term of “focus marker” refers to mark contrastive focus, then their claim regarding
the copula shì further grammaticalized into a focus marker around 500 CE is insufficient
and problematic. I propose that sentences such as (4a&b) that do not indicate contrastive
meaning in discourse are regular copular sentences, in which shì does not function to
signal contrastive focus, but encodes copulative meanings and informational focus just as
in (3) and (4c).
In early Middle Chinese, the high frequency of instances of shì preceding a wh-
word, such as shéi ‘who’ and hé ‘what,’ indicates that shì was employed to mark the
interrogative focus of the wh-words. However, this function of marking interrogative
focus did not extend to other linguistic categories since there was no exclusiveness and
exhaustiveness in sentences like (4a&b), instead, shì as an element coalesced with the
wh-word, and became an integral part of the grammatical word, as a result of
grammatical constructionalization: [shì wh-word] [FM INTERR] > [wh-word]
[INTERR]. Example (6) is the evidence:
(6) 汝 為 是誰?
rǔ wéi shì-shéi
SG2 be who
‘Who are you?’ Xianyujing (CE.500)
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In (6), wéi is the main verb following the subject and preceding the predicate that is
wh-word shì-shéi ‘who.’ Clearly, shì here does not have the status of a copula or a further
grammaticalized focus marker, instead, it was integrated into the wh-word shéi and they
together formed one unit ‘who’ occurring at the predicate position of the sentence.
Lien (2009) proposes a similar idea by looking at the early Southern Min dialect
dated back to the 16th. He argues the development of wh-word shìmiē ‘what’ (later
shénme, with phonetic modification), underwent a process of lexicalization (Lehmann
2004) in which the focus marker shì preceding the wh-word mie lost its independence as
a copula, fused into the latter and with the boundary collapse, the two elements blended
into one wh-word.
Since shì in early Middle Chinese marking wh-word focus changed into part of a
fixed interrogative item, it is unlikely that at the same period of time, the function of
marking contrastive focus expanded from wh-words to a large range of other categorical
elements such as NPs and VPs. In other words, [shì wh-word] did not enter into an
abstract constructional schematic level [shì XP][FM Focus(contrastive)]. I propose
that in early Middle Chinese, shì only marked the focus of wh-words, e.g. (5), and the
two elements were gradually coalesced into one wh-word unit, e.g. (6). Other than
marking wh-words, shì retained the copulative linking function indicating informational
focus, e.g. (3) and (4a&b), and there was no cleft construction in early Middle Chinese.
Only along with the emergence of the cleft construction did the copula shì expand to the
function of signaling NPs or VPs that immediately followed it as contrastive focus. This
process took place in late Middle Chinese.
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5.2.2 Nominalization [XP de]: in late Middle Chinese (700 CE- 1000)
The earliest utterances of nominalization [XP de] (also termed de construction among
Chinese linguists) appeared in Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) with very low frequency, and
the most-widely cited examples are in (7):
(7) a. 定 知 帏帽 底24, 仪容 似 大哥
dìng zhī wéimào de, yíróng sì dàgē
must know hat NOM, appearance like big brother
‘(You) must know the one who’s hatted; he looks like (your) big brother.’
Chaoyejianzai (700 CE)
b. 张 底 乃 我辈 一般 人, 此 终 是 其 坐处
zhāng de nǎi wǒbèi yībān rén , cǐ zhōng shì qí zuòchù
Zhang NOM PTCL we normal person, this eventually COP his sit-place
‘The one who’s named Zhang is a normal person like us; this will
eventually be his seat.’ Suitangjiahua (700 CE)
Ota (1958) suggests that wéimào de ‘hat NOM’ in (7a) is an abbreviation of dài
wéimào de ‘wear hat NOM (the one who’s hatted);’ similarly, Zhāng de ‘Zhang NOM’ in
(7b) is a short form of xìng Zhāng de ‘surname Zhang NOM (the one who’s named
Zhang).’ However, there is no evidence of the corresponding long versions of the similar
examples at the moment. The two examples are the earliest occurrences of
24底 is a pre-modern variant of 的.
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nominalization [XP de] in the history of Chinese. My data from CCL Classical Chinese
Corpus confirm that the earliest nominalizations [XP de] had the structure [NP de].
The particle de that occurs at the final position of a nominalization is termed
nominalizer. Along with the emergence of the nominalizer, other functions of de also
emerged, including associative (or genitive): shuǐ de làng ‘water ASSOC wave (the
waves in the water),’ attributive (or relative): xiū de xíng ‘practice REL behavior (the
behavior that one practices)’25 (Dunhuangbianwen 900 CE).
In terms of the formation of de, there has been an extensive debate among linguists
and no consensus has been reached. Lü (1945) suggests that all the functions of de
developed from the Old Chinese nominalizer zhě; Wang (1958) argues, based on the
phonological liaison, that the Old Chinese attributive particle zhī, e.g. zuì wǒ zhī yoú
‘convict SG1 REL reason’ (the reason that you convict me) (Zuozhuan 400 BCE), was
the origin of de; Mei (1988) further develops Wang’s argument stating that the attributive
de first came into being from its source zhī, then with the influence of zhě which
generally appeared at the phrase final position, the nominalizer de emerged; Jiang (1999)
proposes de originally evolved from the localizer dǐ, e.g. dāng dǐ jiāo fàn ‘pan bottom
burned rice’ (the burned rice at the bottom of the pan) (Shishuoxinyu 500 CE) and
gradually assimilated the functions of zhě and zhī; Cao (1999) develops Jiang’s claim and
argues that the three major functions of de that appeared in late Middle Chinese have
three different origins: the attributive de developed from zhī; the associative de came
from the localizer dǐ; the nominalizer de had the source of zhě.
25 The commonality and distinction between relativization and nominalization have been a hot topic among Chinese linguists, as they are marked by the same linguistic element de, and denote attributive meaning. In this thesis, I treat [VP/S de headNP] as relativization, and [NP/VP/S de] as nominalization.
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How exactly the different functions of de emerged is not the focus of this chapter.
However, although there are different accounts proposed for the distinct functions of de,
it seems most scholars agree that the nominalizer de is, in one way or the other, related to
the Old Chinese zhě. In Old Chinese, zhě was a nominalizer that normally occurred at the
phrase final position serving to turn an XP (XP=NP/VP/S) into a nominalization with the
structure [XP zhě], which is equivalent to English ‘the one/thing.’ [XP zhě] appeared in a
variety of positions26 including the subject position, the object position of a VO phrase, as
in (8), etc. In early Middle Chinese around 500 CE, along with shì being frozen into a
standard copula, it occurred in the predicate position of a copular sentence with very low
frequency (only three occurrences are found in Shishuoxinyu), as in (9).
(8) 知 之 者 不 如 好 之 者
zhī zhī zhě bù rú hào zhī zhě
know it NOM NEG compare like it NOM
‘Those who know it cannot compare to those who like it.’
Lunyu (400 BCE)
(9) 讓 是 殺 我 侍中 者, 不 可 宥!
Ràng shì shā wǒ shìzhōng zhě , bù kě yòu
Rang COP kill my servant NOM, NEG can forgive
‘Rang is the one who killed my servant; he cannot be forgiven!’
Shishuoxinyu (500 CE)
26 The use of the nominalizer zhě in Old Chinese is complex. It normally occurred in [XP de], but it can be optional. For example: we can find shàng zhě and shàng in one piece of text both meaning those that have higher position in the court. The nominalization in Old Chinese is out of the scope of this thesis.
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Example (9) appears to be a specificational copular sentence with the structure [NP
COP NOM]. The context of (9) is: Rang kills one of the king’s servants and another
general. Some high-ranked official in the court wants to excuse him. The king becomes
furious and says that Rang is the one who kills his servant, and he cannot be forgiven.
From the context, the subject Rang is the one and only one who killed the speaker’s
servant. The copular sentence here is background information to support the conclusion
that Rang cannot be forgiven. Pragmatically, Rang is the topic of the copular sentence
that is in contrast with anyone else who did not kill the speaker’s servant. The contrastive
topic in (9) suggests that the copular sentences with the form [NP COP XP zhě] in 500
CE already had the function to signal contrastive. It is not entirely clear at this point how
contrastive focus that is associated with the Modern Chinese cleft construction was
systematically signaled. (9) is not necessarily a construction like the Modern Chinese
cleft construction.
Around 700 CE, de was gradually used instead of zhě in the nominalization [XP
zhě], and its function as a nominalizer emerged. The earliest instances of nominalization
[XP de] appeared to have the form [NP de], as exemplified in (7). They are found
occurring at the subject position, as in (7b), or the object position of VO, as in (7a), but
no examples are found in a copular sentence at this period of time.
After speakers chose de over zhě and the nominalizer de obtained its status, the
host-class of [XP de] expanded from [NP de] to [XP de] (XP=VP/S/NP). (10) is an
example:
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(10) 师 曰, 说 取 行 不 得 底,
shī yuē : shuō qǔ xíng bù dé de,
teacher say: say obtain do NEG obtain NOM,
行 取 说 不 得 底
xíng qǔ shuō bù dé de
do obtain say NEG obtain NOM
‘Teacher says: ‘through saying (you) obtain the things (you) cannot obtain
through doing, through doing (you) obtain the things (you) cannot obtain
through saying.’ Yunzhoudongshanwubenchanshiyulu (850 CE)
In (10), both of the two nominalizations have the serial verbs plus de with the
second (main) verb negated and first verb indicating instrument/method [V Vneg de]: xíng
bù dé de ‘the things through doing (you) cannot obtain’ and shuō bù dé de ‘the things
through saying (you) cannot obtain.’ The nominalization, just like English restrictive
relative clauses (Patten 2010), provides the semantically restricted set that can be
specified by a definite referential member. As I will show in the next sub-section, around
900 CE, [XP de] was recruited at the predicate position of copular sentences, and it was
extended to occur in more syntactic contexts.
5.2.3 The emergence of the cleft construction
5.2.3.1 The emergence of [NP COP NOM] (NOM=XP de)
In late Middle Chinese, along with zhě being gradually replaced by the nominalizer
de and the occurrences of nominalization [XP de] becoming much more frequent, the
sequence of [NP COP XP de] emerged.
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As is shown in 5.2.2, the first occurrences of [XP de] around 700 CE did not appear
in a copular sentence. With the host-class expansion of the nominalization, it is found to
occur at the post-copula predicate position in a copular sentence. One of the earliest
examples of [NP COP XP de] is (11), found in a Tang Dynasty Buddhist text
Jizhoulinjihuizhaochanshiyulu ‘The collective words from Master Linji and Master
Huizhao from Zhenzhou’:
(11) 道流 是 尔 目前 用 底
dàoliú shì ér mùqián yòng de
Daoism COP SG2 currently practice NOM
‘Daoism is the thing you are currently practicing.’
Zhengzhoulinjihuizhaochanshiyulu (880 CE)
(11) is one of the early instances of the copular construction in which a
nominalization consisting of a clause plus the nominalizer de [S de] ér mùqián yòng de
‘the thing you are currently practicing’ was recruited in the predicate position.
Semantically, similar to (9), (11) is specificational in that the post-copula nominalization
conveys a restricted non-referential set ér mùqián yòng de ‘the thing you are currently
practicing’ and the definite referential subject dàoliú ‘Daoism’ specifies the referent of it.
Like (9), pragmatically, since (11) is found in a Buddhist text, the topic of the sentence
dàoliú ‘Daoism’ is clearly in contrast with the Buddhism that is advocated by the Masters.
This shows again that the copular construction with the form [NP COP XP de] in 880 CE
expressed contrastive meaning, but it had not yet developed into a cleft sentence. If (11)
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was already a cleft sentence or had the salient implicature of one, should be the
contrastive focus signaling the presupposition ‘someone is practicing Daoism currently,’
and ‘you’ should involve exclusiveness and exhaustiveness. The context27 does not
provide this indication and therefore (11) is not yet a cleft sentence.
Accordingly, although the nominalization was recruited into the predicate position
of the copular construction and the new structure [NP COP NOM] was used, the
particular specificational meaning with contrastive focus as in a cleft is not found in (11).
Since constructionalization requires a formnew-meaningnew pairing, consequently, the
emergence of (11) was simply a form change, and did not undergo constructionalization,
but it was a micro-step in the stage of pre-constructionalization of the cleft construction.
5.2.3.2 The emergence of the cleft construction
The structure of the post-copula nominalizations in (12III) is [S de] (here S= N V):
(12) I. 莫 將 浮賄 施為
I. mò jiāng fúhuì shīwéi
I. not take bribe behave
II. 非 是 菩薩 行藏
II. fēi shì púsà xíngcáng
II. NEG COP Buddha behavior
27 The context is: the Master says, ‘Daoism is the thing that you are practicing. Just like the Buddha, whenever you have doubts, do you seek help from outsiders? That’s right. If you cannot get help from outsiders, you cannot obtain it from inside either.’
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III. 此 是 俗門 作 底
III. cǐ shì súmén zuò de
III. this COP layman do NOM
‘Don’t execute the bribe behavior; (it) is not Buddha’s behavior; it is
laymen who do this.’ Dunhuangbianwen (900 CE)
The copular sentence in (12III) has the form [NP COP NOM] with the
nominalization [S de] at the predicate position. The context of (12) is: Vimalakīrti tells
one of his disciples not to execute the behavior of bribe, because that is not Buddha’s
behavior; it is laymen who laymen do it. Semantically, it is specificational with the
nominalization [S de] ‘the things that laymen do’ indicating a non-referential set that is
specified by the subject cǐ ‘this’ (the bribe behavior). As for the information structure,
(12III) indicate the presupposition ‘some people execute the bribe behavior’ asserted by
the post-copula NP ‘laymen’, whereby the NP indicates contrastive focus indicated by the
copula shì turning the presupposition into an assertion. It expresses the exclusiveness and
exhaustiveness, as laymen are the only people who execute the bribe behavior in this
context. Moreover, the focus súmén is clearly in contrast with púsà ‘Buddha’ in (12II)
immediately preceding it.
The above analysis shows that the semantics of (12III) has the specificational
meaning, like (3b), (9), (11), but it also indicates contrastive focus. Example (12III) has
the form [NP COP NOM], and its emergence from the regular specification copular
construction underwent the process of constructionalization:
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[NPi COP NPj][SEMi specificational SEMj]
>
[NPi COP NOMj][SEMi specificational+contrastive SEMj]
The process of constructionalization involves gradualness, micro-steps. As it shows
below, each step of the process was a constructional change, as it only involved either
form or meaning change. However, it was both form and meaning change from the
frequent copular construction to the cleft construction.
[NPi COP NPj][SEMi specificational SEMj]
>
[NPi COP [XP zhě]j][SEMi specificational SEMj]
>
[NPi COP [XP de]j][SEMi specificational SEMj]
>
[NPi COP [XP de]j][SEMi specificational + contrastive SEMj]
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The constructionalization involves: a) host-class expansion and syntactic expansion,
i.e. nominalization was developed at the predicate position of a copular sentence; and b)
semantic-pragmatic expansion, the specificational meaning with contrastive focus and
presupposition emerged. I hypothesize that it was starting in sentences like (12III) that
the copula shì was expanded to signal contrastive focus. If we take a further look at the
newly emerging cleft sentence, we can see the subject of (12III) cǐ ‘this’ is semantically
co-referential with the implicit object of the nominalization. I suggest (12III) is one of the
first attested cleft-obj occurrences in the attested record of the history of Chinese.
Accordingly, (12III) can also be schematized as [NPi COP [XP de]j][SEMi cleft-obj
SEMj].
From the above discussion, I hypothesize that the cleft-obj emerged out of the
frequent copular construction [NP COP NP] around 900 CE, and was constructionalized
through host-class, syntactic, and semantic-pragmatic expansion. With the
constructionalization of the cleft-obj, the more schematic cleft construction occurred.
5.2.3.3 The emergence of the cleft-sbj
In the cleft-obj (12III), the subject of the sentence cǐ ‘this’ is semantically co-referential
with the implicit object of the nominalization, the two cleft sentences of (13) show that
the two subjects are co-referential with the subjects of the nominalizations.
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(13) I. 天下人 总 是 学 得 底
I. tiān xià rén zǒng shì xué dé de
I. people under heaven always COP study obtain NOM
II. 某甲 是 悟 得 底
II. mǒujiǎ shì wù dé de
II. SG1 COP enlighten obtain NOM
‘It is through study that people under heaven always obtain (the state of
Chan); it is through enlightenment that I obtain (it).’
Chanlinsengbaozhuan (1100 CE)
Example (13) is found in Chanlinsengbaozhuan (1100 CE), a Northern Song (960
CE-1127) Chan Buddhism classic. The context is about a little monk: one day when the
little monk is meditating, he suddenly feels enlightened; he instantly gets up and goes to
see the abbot; then he says to the abbot that it is through study that people always obtain
the state of Chan, but it is through enlightenment that he himself obtains it. Both the
sentences in (13) have the structure of [NP COP NOM] with the nominalization [V V de],
in which the first of the serial verbs indicates instrument/method. In comparison with (13)
and (12III), both of the subjects of the two sentences, i.e. tiānxiàrén ‘people under heaven’
in (13I) and mǒujiǎ ‘I’ in (13II), are co-referential with the implicit subjects of the two
nominalizations. Both sentences in (13) express the specificational meaning: the post-
copula nominalizations form two restricted non-referential sets ‘those who obtain (Chan)
through study’ and ‘those who obtain (Chan) through enlightenment’ that are respectively
specified by the referential subjects ‘people under heaven’ and ‘I.’ The two sentences are
obviously in contrast with each other. In (13I), the immediate post-copula verb xué
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‘through study’ is the contrastive focus indicated by the copula shì asserting the
presupposition ‘people under heaven obtain the state of Chan through some method.’ As
opposed to ‘through study’ in (13I), (13II) has the contrastive focus wù ‘through
enlightenment’ asserting the presupposition ‘I obtain the state of Chan through some
method.’
I suggest that the subject-subject co-referentiality in (13) shows further semantic
expansion since the cleft-obj was constructionalized. What’s more, in the following
discussion, I will show the development of the cleft-sbj also involves syntactic expansion
that is the optionality of the nominalizer de.
An interesting example occurred in Wudenghuiyuan (1252) as in (14).
Wudenghuiyuan is a collection of classics of Chan Buddhism edited by Puji from
Southern Song (1127-1279) who compiled three Chan classics from Northern Song (960
CE-1127) including Chanlinsengbaozhuan (1100) and two from Southern Song. In
Wudenghuiyuan, the story of the little monk being enlightened was rewritten and (14) is
the new version of (13):
(14) I. 天下人 总 是 参 得 底 禅
I. tiānxiàrén zǒng shì cān dé de chán
I. people under heaven always COP meditate obtain REL Chan
II. 某 是 悟 得 底
II. mǒu shì wù dé de
II. SG1 COP enlighten obtain NOM
‘It is through meditation that people always obtain the state of Chan; it is
through enlightenment that I obtain it.’ Wudenghuiyuan (1252)
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Comparing (14) with (13), since both mǒujiǎ and mǒu are variants of the first
person singular pronoun, (13II) and (14II) are almost exactly the same. As for (13I) and
(14I), they have the same subject tiānxiàrén ‘people under heaven’, same copula
modified by the adverb zǒng ‘always;’ the differences show up in the post-copula
elements: first, xué ‘through study’ in (13I) correspnds to cān ‘through meditation’ in
(14I); second, the nominalization xué dé de ‘study obtain NOM’ is replaced by a head NP
with a relative clause cān dé de Chán ‘meditate obtain REL Chan’.
In 5.2.2, I have mentioned that three major functions of de emerged in late Middle
Chinese: the nominalizer de, the attributive (relative) de and the associative (genitive) de.
The de in (14I) is the attributive (relative) de introducing a relative clause for a head noun,
which probably developed from the Old Chinese zhī (although no consensus has been
reached on this point). It is distinct from the nominalizer de in (13I), which is related to
the Old Chinese nominalizer zhě. Consequently, (14I) seems to be a copular sentence
[NP COP NP] that does not involve a nominalization at the predicate position.
However, (14I) appears to indicate exactly the same semantics and information
structure as (13I). The immediate post-copula verb cān ‘through meditation’ encodes
focus in contrast to wù ‘through enlightenment’ in (14II). Both (13I) and (14I) indicate
the same presupposition ‘people obtain the state of Chan through some method.’ Based
on the observation, I propose that (14I) also has the form [NP COP NOM] involving a
nominalization [REL NP (de)] at the post-copula position with the sentence final
nominalizer de being optional. Moreover, just like (13), the two sentences in (14) involve
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the semantic subject-subject co-referentiality. Therefore, I hypothesize (14) provides a
piece of evidence of syntactic expansion after the cleft-sbj came into being.
Example (15) presents two cleft-sbj sentences with the subject-subject co-
referentiality. The post-copula nominalization consists of [VP de], the VPs fā chū lái-le
‘discharge come out-ASP’ and shōuliǎn xiàng lǐ ‘retain toward inside’ are the focuses in
contrast with each other. In (15I), the post-copula VP is attached with the aspectual
marker le and the nominalizer de is implicit, whereas in (15II), the focus VP and the
nominalizer de is specified.
(15) I. 蓋 仁 是 箇 發 出來 了,
I. Gài rén shì gè fā chū lái - le,
Alas benevolence COP CL discharge come out-ASP,
便 硬 而 強
biàn yìng ér qiáng
then hard and strong
II. 義 便 是 收斂 向 裏 底,
II. yì biàn shì shōuliǎn xiàng lǐ de,
Righteousness then COP retrain toward inside NOM,
外面 見 之 便 是 柔
wàimiàn jiàn zhī biàn shì róu
outside see it then COP soft
‘Alas, the benevolence is the thing that discharges and comes out of (the
body), and thus it is hard and strong; whereas the righteousness is the
thing that retains toward inside of (the body), and thus is seen to be soft
from outside.’ Zhuziyulei (1270)
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(16I&II) are also cleft-sbj sentences in contrast to each other with co-referential
subjects. The nominalizations have the structure of [ADV VP de], the post-copula
focuses, the two VPs, are modified by the adverbs cháng ‘always’ and yǐ ‘already’
respectively. For (16II), the VP yǐ sàn le ‘already scatter ASP’ is attached with the
aspecutal marker le, and the final nominalizer de is present.
(16) 神 便 是 氣 之 伸, I. 此 是 常 在 底
shén biàn shì qì zhī shēn , I. cǐ shì cháng zài de
god then COP air ASSOC stretch, I. this COP always exist NOM
鬼 便 是 氣 之 屈,
guǐ biàn shì qì zhī qū ,
ghost then COP air ASSOC crook,
II. 便 是 已 散 了 底
II. biàn shì yǐ sàn le de
II. then COP already scatter-ASP NOM
‘Gods are just the stretch of air; this always exists. Ghosts are just the crook
of air; (it) has already scattered.’ Zhuziyulei (1270)
The cleft-sbj emerged out of the cleft-obj around 1100 through semantic and
pragmatic expansion, and further developed with syntactic expansion. The process also
involves micro-steps as follows:
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[NPi COP [XP de]j][SEMi cleft-obj SEMj]
>
[NPi COP [XP de]j][SEMi cleft-sbj SEMj]
>
[NPi COP [XP (de)]j][SEMi cleft-sbj SEMj]
Each step here was a constructional change, however it was constructionalization
with both form and meaning change from the cleft-obj to the developed cleft-sbj. When
the cleft-sbj emerged, it together with the cleft-obj as two subschemas entered into the
more schematic abstract cleft construction that parallels to equational and specificational
copular constructions in the taxonomy of the prototypical copular construction. (See the
taxonomy in Chapter 3 Figure 3.2)
This section has given a systematic analysis of the historical emergence of the cleft
construction. I have argued the cleft-obj was constructionalized in late Middle Chinese
out of the specificational copular construction [NP COP NP]. The cleft-obj was
constructionalized through the syntactic and host-class expansion where the
nominalization was recruited to the post-copula position, and the copula started to
indicate contrastive focus. It developed the specificational meaning with contrastive
focus out of regular specificational meaning. After the cleft-obj was constructionalized, it
underwent further semantic-pragmatic expansion, e.g. subject-subject co-referentiality,
thus the cleft-sbj emerged, and it further developed with syntactic expansion (the
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optionality of the nominalizer). cleft-obj and cleft-sbj became two subschemas of the
cleft construction. In the next section, I will focus on how and why the new constructions
emerged using the framework of constructionalization.
5.3 Constructionalization
In this section, I consider the motivation and mechanism of the process of the
constructionalization of the cleft construction [NPi COP NOMj][SEMi
specificational+contrastive SEMj].
5.3.1 Motivation: Analogy and pragmatic inferencing
In 5.2.1, I have shown that in early Middle Chinese, shì was already a standard copula
with the frequent form [NP COP NP], and the encoded meanings of predicational and
specificational were also crystalized. In late Middle Chinese, the nominalization
construction [XP de] occurred, whose encoded meaning, expressing a non-referential but
restricted set, partially coincided with that of the specificational copular sentences. The
semantic relatedness enabled the nominalization to be taken as part of the specificational
copular sentences.
Along with [XP de] becoming more and more frequent, it was recruited at the
predicate position of a copular sentence; thus, the sequence of [NP COP XP de] occurred.
I suggest that the recruitment of the nominalization into the predicate position of the
copular construction of [NP COP NP] was motivated by their semantic relatedness and
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the analogical thinking modeling the extant exemplar: the early Middle Chinese [NP COP
XP zhě]. Some early utterances of [NP COP XP de] expressed the regular specificational
meaning following [NP COP XP zhě]: the nominalization denoted a non-referential
restricted set, informational focus with new information, while the subject indicates the
referential member, usually as the pragmatic topic to provide given information. They
were propositions that did not indicate contrastive- presupposition.
However, around the same period of time in some other utterances, speakers started
expressing contrast and presupposition to the string and the focus of [NP COP XP de]
shifted-- the immediate post-copula element started to encode contrastive focus. The
sentence was an assertion and provided contrast with a certain alternative in the previous
or upcoming discourse. The emergent pragmatic inferencing of contrast and
presupposition gave rise to reanalysis of the semantics of [NP COP XP de] and the
bracketing of information. It still had specificational meaning, but the immediate post-
copula element started to indicate contrastive focus and the rest of the sentence encoded
the corresponding presupposition. The meaning of specificational+contrastive emerged.
The newly semanticized meaning provided the context for the copula shì to expand the
function of signaling contrastive focus. Accordingly, the cleft-obj came into being.
After the cleft-obj emerged, and the specificational+contrastive meaning was
crystalized, speakers started to express agentive meaning using this focusing structure,
which gave rise to the semantic reanalysis as subject-subject co-referentiality and later on
the syntactic expansion on the optionality of the nominalizer de.
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Therefore, the steering factors that motivated the cleft-obj and cleft-sbj to emerge is
essentially the speakers’ communicative strategies in asserting a presupposition with a
contrastive focus and to express agentive meaning. The pragmatic inferencing led to
semantic reanalysis, and combined with the newly emerged syntactic reconfiguration
motivated by analogy. This observation is consistent with what is held by functional
linguists working within a grammaticalization framework who concentrate on semantic-
pragmatic forces, and with the emphasis on language use and language processing, they
see change as gradual, non-discrete, and guided mainly by external or contextual forces.
Hopper and Traugott (2003:73) state what motivates language change are “speaker-hearer
interactions and communicative strategies.”
5.3.2 Mechanism: Analogization and Reanalysis
I argue that the cleft-obj coming into being underwent syntactic reconfiguration through
analogization. As has been pointed out in Chapter 2 section 2.3.3.2, analogical thinking is
one of the enabling factors that allow change, though it does not necessarily bring about
change, whereas analogization is a mechanism that gives rise to new structures. All
analogizations involve reanalysis and “are instances of reanalysis, because each case of
analogization involves a slight restructuring of what the speaker or hearer knows about a
particular expression.” (Traugott and Trousdale 2011)
The recruitment of the nominalization [XP de], in which the non-referential
restricted set in common with definite noun phrases is given, into the predicate position
of a frequent copular sentence [NP COP NP] underwent analogization modeling the early
169
Middle Chinese string [NP COP XP zhě]. The process of syntactic reconfiguration is
[NP COP NP] [NP COP XP de], which later led to further reanalysis of semantic and
syntactic reconfiguration including subject-subject co-referentiality and the optionality of
the nominalizer de.
In the following discussion, I first sketch the constructionalization process of the
change in terms of Croft (2001)’s Radical Construction Grammar model of construction,
and then I illustrate the change in the frame of constructional schemas (a hierarchy) to
show how the reanalysis took place. The constructionalization of the cleft construction is
schematized as follows:
170
frequent copular construction the cleft-obj the cleft-sbj
(500 CE-) constructionalization (900 CE-) constructionalization(1100-)
Figure 5.1: Model of the development of the cleft-obj and cleft-sbj (form in the upper box
and meaning in the lower box. SY: syntax PH: phonology SE: semantics PR: pragmatics
DI: discourse)
Figure 5.1 captures the process of constructionalization of the cleft-obj from the
frequent copular construction and the constructionalization of the cleft-sbj from the cleft-
obj. According to the development of constructional schematic taxonomy in Figure 5.2,
change occurred in the level of instances of micro-constructions and tokens of use, e.g., cǐ
shì súmén zuò de ‘this is what laymen do’ in (12), and later mǒujiǎ shì wù dé de ‘it is
through enlightenment that I obtain (the state of Chan)’ in (13). The change is gradual
•SY:[NPCOPNP]
• SE:speciPicational • PR:subjectNP‐‐topic;postCOPNP‐‐informationalfocus
•SY:[NPCOPNOM]NOM=XPde
• SE:speciPicational;objco‐referential
• PR:contrastivefocus(immediatepost‐COPelement)
• DI:contrastive
•SY:[NPCOPNOM]NOM=XP(de)
• SE:speciPicational;sbjco‐referential
• PR:contrastivefocus(immediatepost‐COPelement)
• DI:contrastive
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involving many micro-steps, from [NP COP NP] to [NP COP [S zhě]] to [NP COP [S
de]], to [NP COP [VP de]], [NP COP [RC NP (de)]], [NP COP [ADV VP (de)]]. The
constructionalization of the cleft-obj involved host-class expansion, syntactic expansion,
semantic/pragmatic expansion, and the constructionalization of the cleft-sbj also involved
semantic/pragmatic expansion and the syntactic expansion. When the cleft-obj and cleft-
sbj occurred, the cleft construction emerged at a more abstract schema level, which
became a subschema, paralleling to equational and regular specificational copular
constructions in the constructional schematic taxonomy of the prototypical Chinese
copular construction.
Figure 5.2: the development of the constructional schematic taxonomy of the prototypical
Chinese copular construction
[NPiCOPNPj]‐‐[SEMicopulativelinkingSEMj](500C.E‐‐)
[NPiCOPNPj]‐‐[SEMispeciPicationalSEMj](500C.E‐‐)
[NPiCOPNPj]‐‐[SEMiequationalSEMj](500C.E‐‐)
[NPiCOPNPj]‐‐[SEMispeciPicationalSEMj](500C.E‐‐) [NPiCOPNOMi]‐‐[SEMispeciPicational
+contrastiveSEMj](900C.E‐‐)
[NPiCOPNOMj]‐‐[SEMicleft‐obj]SEMj(900C.E‐‐) [NPiCOPNOMj]‐‐[SEMicleft‐sbjSEMj]
(1100‐‐)
[NPiCOPNPj]‐‐[SEMipredicationalSEMj](500C.E‐‐)
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5.3.3 Conventionalization: Frequency
The mechanisms of change explain how one mental representation of a given expression
can give rise to a different one. Bybee (2003) introduces frequency of use as one of the
mechanisms: “new constructions come into being and spread by gradually increasing
their frequency of use over time” (Bybee and McClelland 2005:387). Bybee (2003:602)
states, “frequency is not just a result of grammaticalization, it is also a primary
contributor to the process, an active force in instigating the changes that occur in
grammaticalization. ” She distinguishes token frequency from type frequency suggesting
token frequency is a mechanism that enables and brings about change at the first place
and is also the outcome of change, whereas type frequency is the key to entrenchment or
storage, which helps the outcome of change be frozen, fixed and conventionalized in a
community.
Traugott and Trousdale (2011) point out that the enabling effect of token frequency
is debatable. Their evidence is that according to the historical texts they have examined,
several grammatical changes have started with very low frequency and sometimes
continue to be used with low token frequency (also in Hoffmann 2005). My observation
of the emergence of the Chinese cleft construction is consistent with Traugott and
Trousdale’s point here.
As I have shown in 5.2.2 and 5.2.3, the instances of nominalization [XP de] started
with very low frequency in early Middle Chinese in the Tang Dynasty (618 CE -907).
According to Cao (1995) and Wu (1997), in Dunhuangbianwen (900 CE), in which the
early instances of the cleft construction (such as example 12) are found, includes 12
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tokens of the particle de and only 3 tokens of nominalization [XP de] in total including
example (13) as the only one instance of [NP shì XP de] in the text. This shows when the
pseudo-cleft construction emerged, in which a nominalization was recruited into the
predicate position of a copular sentence, the structure of nominalization [XP de] itself
was newly emerged and occurred with low frequency. What is more, the extant
analogical exemplar that enabled the recruitment—the early Middle Chinese string [NP
COP XP zhě] was also sporadic. In Zhutangji (950 CE), 230 tokens of the particle de are
found including 26 (11.3%) attested instances of nominalization [XP de] (Feng
2000:428), only one of them occurred in a pseudo-cleft sentence. After the cleft
construction came into being, it still occurred with low frequency, and it remained low
frequency for a long time even in Southern Song (1127-1279). In Zhuziyulei (1270),
according to Zhu (1991) the token number of [NP COP XP de] is 606 (13.3% out of
4,560 tokens of particle de). From Zhuziyulei on, as [NP COP XP de] became more and
more frequent, the cleft construction was entrenched, integrated and spread through the
language system and was conventionalized in the language community. Therefore,
frequency and repetition are undoubtedly a major factor in the fixing, freezing, and
autonomizing associated with constructionalization; frequency itself appears implausible
as a motivation for the onset of change.
5.3.4 Generality, productivity and compositionality
Traugott and Trousdale (2011) point out the relevant dimensions of constructionalization
are generality/schematicity, productivity and compositionality.
174
Increase in generality is associated with generalization of meaning. With the
emergence of the cleft-obj, the meaning of the nominalization as a whole was bleached. It
no longer specifically denoted an entity, but indicated a presupposition asserted by a
contrastive focus. The pragmatic implicature that enabled the constructionalization
became part of the new meaning, which was more abstract, procedural and general than a
nominalization on its own. When the cleft-sbj occurred, with the subject-subject co-
referentiality, the nominal meaning of the nominalization was further bleached and
generalized and it was possible for speakers to use the sentence final nominalizer de
optionally.
Traugott and Trousdale treat increase in productivity as generalization of use. With
the constructionalization of the pseudo-cleft and cleft construction, the copula shì
functioned to mark the element immediately following it as focus. The increase in
productivity is represented by the categorical expansion of the focus:
NPVVPADV, as exemplified in (12)-(16), which contributed to the micro-steps at
the micro-construction level. What is more, as the cleft-sbj emerged, the nominal
meaning of the nominalization became more bleached and generalized, and the verb of
the nominalization started to entail temporal and aspectual events and situations. As we
have seen in (15) and (16), both of the VPs in the nominalizations fā chū lái-le ‘discharge
come out-ASP’ and yǐ sàn-le ‘already scatter-ASP’ were cliticized by the aspectual
marker le. Accordingly, the nominalizations fā chū lái-le (de) ‘the thing that has come out’
and yǐ sàn le de ‘the thing that has scattered’ expressed situations involving aspectuality.
Increased generality and productivity led to increased schematicity. With the
development of new micro-constructions, the schema came to have new construction-
175
types, and the cleft construction emerged, which became a sub schema in the in the
constructional schematic taxonomy of the prototypical Chinese copular construction. The
schematicity was increased.
The processes of the constructionalization of the cleft-obj and the cleft-sbj also
involved decrease in compositionality. The contrastive focus indicated by the immedicate
post-copula element within the nominalization gave rise to the decrease of its
compositionality as a whole. Furthermore, its compositionality also decreased as the
meaning of the nominalization became bleached and generalized, leading to the
optionality of the nominalizer.
5.4 Conclusion
This chapter addresses the constructionalization processes of the cleft-obj and the cleft-
sbj in the history of Chinese. I argued that the development of the cleft-obj involved the
recruitment of the nominalization at the predicate position of the frequent copular
construction through analogization, which led to pragmatic inferencing giving rise to
semantic and syntactic reanalysis. Analogy and pragmatic inferencing were the enabling
factors and analogization and reanalysis were the major mechanisms for the change.
After the cleft-obj came into being, the pragmatic inferencing of expressing agentive
meaning enabled the semantic reanalysis of sbj co-referentiality, the cleft-sbj occurred.
After it occurred, it involved further syntactic expansion of the optionality of the
nominalizer de. The cleft-obj and cleft-sbj became two subschemas under the more
abstract schematic cleft construction.
176
Frequency and repetition were undoubtedly a major factor in the fixing, freezing,
and autonomizing associated with constructionalization, however, frequency itself did not
appear to be a motivation to enable change. I show Shi and Li’s claim that the copula shì
was further grammaticalized into a contrastive focus marker around 500 CE is
problematic. Instead, shì remained a systematic invariant copula verb since it was
entrenched in early Middle Chinese, and it is with the emergence of the cleft construction
that the copula expanded its syntactic function to signal contrastive focus.
177
Chapter 6
The Constructionalization of the Cleft Construction
This chapter provides a summary of the thesis and reviews issues for future research.
Section 6.1 is the summary is given and section 6.2 introduces possible directions for
future study that related but not yet covered by this study.
6.1 Summary of the thesis
This thesis addressed the functions of shì in Modern Chinese and attempted to answer the
following questions within the framework of Construction Grammar and
Constructionalization:
a. What is the copular construction?
b. What is the cleft construction?
c. How and why did the copular construction emerge?
d. How and why and did the cleft construction come into being?
This thesis started with the copula analysis of shì in Chinese cleft sentences. Based
on a cross-linguistic understanding of the concepts of “copula” and “cleft,” I proposed
that, in spite of its being a non-inflectional invariant predicate marker, the Modern
178
Chinese shì is a systematic copula verb. In Construction Grammar terms, the Chinese
copular construction is a form and meaning pairing that has the form [(XP) COP XP]
with [NP COP NP] as the prototype, and has the meaning of copulative linking,
specifically predicational meaning and specificational meaning, i.e., a regular
specificational sentence, an equational sentence, a cleft sentence.
I proposed a constructional schematic taxonomy for the prototypical Chinese
copular construction [NPi COP NPj][SEMi copulative linking SEMj]:
Figure 6.1: The constructional schematic taxonomy of the prototypical Chinese copular
construction
I suggested that the Chinese cleft sentences are special copular sentences and inherit
the form and meaning properties from the schematic copular construction. The cleft
construction has the form [NP COP NOM] (NOM= (ADV/TP/PP) VP/S de) and the
specificational meaning with the contrastive focus that is encoded by the immediate post-
shì element signaled by the copula shì.
[NPiCOPNPj]<‐‐>[SEMicopulativelinkingSEMj]
[NPiCOPNPj]<‐‐>[SEMispeciPicationalSEMj]
[NPiCOPNPj]<‐‐>[SEMiequationalSEMj]
[NPiCOPNPj]<‐‐>[SEMispeciPicationalSEMj]
[NPiCOPNOMj]<‐‐>[SEMispeciPicational+contrastiveSEMj]
[NPiCOPNOMj]<‐‐>[SEMicleft‐objSEMj]
[NPiCOPNOMj]<‐‐>[SEMicleft‐sbjSEMj]
[NPiCOPNPj]<‐‐>[SEMipredicationalSEMj]
179
Figure 6.2 presents a comparison of the form and meaning between the copular
construction and the cleft construction:
The copular construction The cleft construction
Figure 6.2: A comparison of the two constructions (form in the upper box and meaning in
the lower box. SY: syntax PH: phonology SM: semantics PR: pragmatics DI: discourse)
I proposed that the cleft construction has two subschemas: cleft-sbj and cleft-obj.
The cleft-sbj involves the sbj co-referentiality (the subject of the sentence semantically
co-referential with the subject of the nominalization) and the optionality of the
nominalizer de; whereas a cleft-obj involves the obj co-referentiality (the subject of the
sentence co-referential with the object of the nominalization) and the obligatory
nominalizer.
Shì is generally treated to signal contrastive focus in the cleft construction. Some
linguists including Huang (1998) claim that shì is not the copula verb in cleft sentences,
but has the status of an adverb. I argued that the cleft sentences in these linguists’ view
•SY:[NPCOPNP]
• SM:speciPicational• PR:informationalfocus(post‐COPNP)
•SY:[NPCOPNOM]
• SM:speciPicational• PR:contrastivefocus(theimmediatepost‐COPelement)
• DI:contrastive
180
are actually the examples of the cleft-sbj. Since the nominalizer de in the cleft-sbj is
optional, there are two variants of the cleft-sbj: one with de at the end, the other without
an explicit nominalizer. A search on CCL Modern Chinese Corpus shows the
prototypical form of the cleft-sbj is [PRO COP (ADV/TP/PP) VP de] as only 23.1% (638
out of 2761 tokens) of the nominalizer de in the cleft-sbj is implicit in actual discourse.
The treatment of shì as an adverb fails to explain why shì can co-occur with an optional
nominalizer de. With a systematic copula treatment of shì, the presence of de can be
adequately explained as a nominalizer to preserve a specificational [NP COP NOM]
structure.
In some Modern Chinese idioms, shì retains the classical trace of the demonstrative
pronoun or demonstrative from Old Chinese, which supports the argument that the copula
shì in Modern Chinese evolved from the demonstrative pronoun in Old Chinese. This
thesis addressed how and why the demonstrative pronoun changed into a copula verb. I
proposed that the emergence of the copular construction involved reanalysis of the topic-
comment construction [(XPi) [shì XPj PTCL]][(Topici) [Anaphor SEMj
Declarative]], in which the demonstrative pronoun shì that occurred at the subject
position of the comment clause (a classical copular clause) and functioned as the anaphor
referring to the topic phrase evolved into the copula shì through a process of
analogization modeling the structure of the full transitive verb wéi: [(XPi) wéi XPj
(PTCL)][(SEMi) BE SEMj (Declarative)] in Old Chinese.
The analysis focuses on the two conditions in which the grammatical
constructionalization took place: 1) the semantic relatedness between the original
construction and the target outcome: the function of anaphor linked the topic and the
181
predicate part of the comment clause, turning the whole topic-comment sentence into a
copulative meaning; 2) the morphosyntactic contexts in which the change was enabled:
the topic-comment construction [(XPi) [shì XPj PTCL]][(Topici) [Anaphor SEMj
Declarative]]. The constructionalization of the copular construction can be schematized
as:
[(XPi) [shì XPj PTCL]][(Topici) [Anaphor SEMj Declarative]]
>
[(XPi) COP XPj (PTCL)][(SEMi) copulative linking SEMj (Declarative)]
Furthermore, I suggested the demonstrative pronoun shì changed into a copula in
the copular construction. After the copula shì came into being, it competed with the Old
Chinese wéi ‘to be.’ Eventually shì won over and became the standard copula in Middle
Chinese. This is a functional change from discourse anaphoric to syntactic linking
function, along with the decrease of the instances of classical copular sentence.
After the emergence of the copular construction [(XPi) COP XPj
(PTCL)][(SEMi) copulative linking SEMj (Declarative)], the occurrences [NPi COP
NPj][SEMi COP SEMj] became more and more frequent, and around 500 CE, the
structure [NP COP NP] was conventionalized as the prototype for the copular
construction and shì was already a standard copula verb. With the emergence of the
copular construction, the copulative linking meanings of predicational and specificational
were also crystalized.
182
The regular copular sentences encode predicate informational focus in terms of
information structure, that is to say the subject usually encodes referential given
information, generally a topic, and the post-copula predicate as a whole is the
informational focus indicating non-referential new information.
I hypothesized that around 700 CE, the nominalization construction [XP de]
emerged through analogization modeling the Old Chinese nominalization construction
[XP zhě]. Along with the syntactic and semantic expansion, [XP de] became more and
more frequent, and was recruited at the predicate position of a copular sentence; thus, the
sequence of [NP COP XP de] occurred. I suggested that the recruitment of the
nominalization into the predicate position of the copular construction of [NP COP NP]
was motivated by their semantic relatedness and the analogical thinking modeling the
extant exemplar: the early Middle Chinese [NP COP XP zhě]. Early utterances of [NP
COP XP de] only expressed the regular specificational meaning: the nominalization
denoted a non-referential restricted set, informational focus with new information, while
the subject indicates the referential member, usually as the topic to provide given
information. They were propositions that did not indicate contrastive-presupposition
information structure.
However, around the same period of time in some other utterances, speakers started
using [NP COP XP de] in contrastive context, and the contrastive focus emerged. The
subject NP still indicated topic, but the immediate post-copula element started to encode
contrastive focus signaled by the copula. The sentence was an assertion and provided
contrast with a certain alternative in the previous or upcoming discourse. The emergent
pragmatic inferencing of assertion gave rise to reanalysis of the semantics of [NP COP
183
NOM]. It still had the specificational meaning, on top of which the contrastive meaning
was expressed. The newly semanticized meaning provided the context for the copula shì
to expand the function of signaling contrastive focus. Accordingly, the cleft-obj came
into being, in which the subject is semantically co-referential with the object of the
nominalization.
After the cleft-obj emerged, and the meaning of specificational with contrastive was
crystalized, speakers started to express agentive meaning using this focusing structure,
which enabled the semantic reanalysis such as subject-subject co-referentiality and later
on the syntactic expansion on the optionality of the nominalizer de.
This thesis analyzed the form and meaning of the copular construction and the cleft
construction as well as how they developed in the history of Chinese. The analysis
showed that it is in the cleft construction that the copula signals contrastive focus. Doing
construction grammar avoids examining a linguistic element as an isolated atomic item,
but analyzing it in the context of a construction. As we know, if a speaker intends to
articulate a cleft sentence, but if s/he stops right after shì, the hearer will have no idea that
the immediate following linguistic element will be a contrastive focus. Only if the
speaker produces the whole sentence would the hearer possibly identify the contrastive
meaning from the context. This shows it is the cleft construction as a whole that marks
the contrastive focus, the copula only signals it, but does not mark it.
6.2 Thoughts on future study
This section reviews some possible issues for future study, including the development of
shì as a bound morpheme, the historical development of nominalization and relativization
184
in the history of Chinese as well as the development of different approaches of
contrastive focus.
6.2.1 Shì as a bound morpheme
In chapter 1, I showed that in Modern Chinese, shì is found as a bound form in a set of
connectives, e.g. kěshì ‘but,’ jiùshì ‘even if,’ yàoshì ‘if,’ háishì ‘or.’ Previous research
(Chen 1993; Dong 2004; etc.) generally assumes that the development of the set
underwent the process of lexicalization in the sense of univerbation (Lehmann 2002),
with the syntactic strings [ADV/N/V COP] losing internal constituency and fusing into
one unit over time. Did the copula shì coalescing with the preceding lexemes and
changing into a bound morpheme undergo what Lehmann considers to be lexicalization,
or a process of grammatical constructionalization? How and why did shì change into a
bound morpheme? How does the change fit into the systemic change of Chinese over
time?
6.2.2 Relativization and nominalization
In the discussion of how the cleft construction came into being, I briefly mentioned the
development of the nominalization. In Old Chinese, zhě is the nominalizer that turns an
NP/VP/S into a nominalization, and zhī is a relative/attributive marker that introduces a
relative clause preceding a head noun. However, zhī can also be found used as
nominalizer in Old Chinese, and the nominalizer zhě in some circumstances can be
optional. It is clear that both zhě and zhī were replaced by de since Middle Chinese,
however there has been no consensus on how and why the changes occurred. How
185
exactly the nominalization and relativization emerge and develop in the history of
Chinese?
6.2.3 The development of contrastive focus
Because Chinese is a verb-medial (VO) language, informational focus in Chinese
typically falls on the post-verbal elements. The information focus occurred along with the
verbal construction in Old Chinese. This thesis addressed one type of contrastive focus:
that indicated by the cleft construction. There are other ways to signal contrastive focus,
e.g. lián construction, etc. What exactly are these approaches? How and why did they
occur and develop? How did the cleft construction fit into the systemic change of
contrastive focus?
6.3 Summary
This thesis investigated Chinese copular construction and its subschemas in the
framework of Construction Grammar and Constructionalization. Future work remains to
be done as how a particular change fits into the systemic change of Chinese overtime as
well as whether the framework of this study can be extended to other languages and
domains.
186
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