This study of grammaticalization in Chinese offers a highly accessible and comprehensive overview of both the diachronic development and current syntactic status of a wide variety of grammatical morphemes in Chinese. Approaching the issue of grammaticalization from a formal, theoretical point of view, but also making use of traditional insights into language change, Xiu-Zhi Zoe Wu shows how a range of syntactic mechanisms have conspired to result in the grammatical constructions and functional morphemes of modern Chinese. Patterns from Chinese and an in-depth analysis of the development of functional categories in the language are also used to argue for more general, cross-linguistic principles of language change, and provide valuable insights into the principled ways that grammatical words evolve across languages.
Grammaticalization and Language Change in Chinese is an attempt to apply formal, Chomskyean syntactic theory to the traditional area of the study of language change. Although the analyses of the book are cast within such a theoretical approach to language, the data and generalizations brought to light should be of considerable interest to linguists from quite different backgrounds, and the central ideas and intuitions of the various chapters are presented in a way that makes them accessible to a wide and varied readership. The book is not only a highly informative and useful resource on Chinese but also clearly indicates what Chinese is able to show about language change and the phenomena of grammaticalization in general.
–BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved