The Historical Morpho-Syntax of Chinese

by Yuzhi Shi, Xiqin Liu (Translator)

Overview

This book provides a comprehensive history of the evolution of Chinese grammar over the past 3,000 years. Presenting the theoretical frameworks of grammaticalization, cognitive linguistics, and linguistic typology, it focuses on the motivations, mechanisms, and courses of the evolution of the Chinese morphology and syntax.

The development of a language is similar to that of an organic body, with internal correlations between the emergences of new phenomena and the disappearances of old phenomena within in a particular period. The book explores all the major historical changes in depth, including word order changes, constructionalizations, replacement of old morphological markers with new ones, information-organizing principles, and newly formed grammatical devices. It also discusses the main motivations responsible for grammatical changes, such as phonological changes, the overall property change of the grammatical system, the frequency of co-occurrences of words and phrases, pragmatic contexts, and language contacts.

The Chinese language, which has had the longest history and has been continuously documented, is the quintessence of the intelligence of human beings as a whole. As such, this comprehensive history of the Chinese language is meaningful in many ways—scholarly, culturally, and socially, and is a valuable resource for anyone interested in exploring the cognition of human.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789819604869
Publisher:	Springer Nature Singapore
Publication date:	09/17/2025
Pages:	575
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Yuzhi Shi obtained his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1999, was Research Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara, from 1996 to 2002, and currently is Associate Professor at National University of Singapore. The Chinese version, The Evolution of Chinese Grammar, was awarded ‘China Best Publication Prize’, a biannual award by the China Publishers Association. He has published more than 30 monographs on Chinese linguistics, cognitive linguistics, linguistic typology, and grammaticalization. In addition, he has published more 160 papers in national and international professional journals. With over 10,000 citations and an h-index of 45 in Google Scholar, he is ranked second in the International Chinese Linguistic Society. In the China National Knowledge Infrastructure, his citations are more than 21,000 and his h-index is 66, ranking him first in Chinese language and linguistics in terms of original research.

Table of Contents

Introduction.- The development of copular markers.- Special word order of interrogative pronouns, negative marker.- From interrogative pronouns to exclamation, focus, and negative.- Latest development of question constructions.- Emergence of ‘verb plus resultative’ construction.- The effect of disyllabification on grammar.- Frequency and grammatical changes.- Semantic suitability for grammaticalization.- Contexts for grammatical changes.- Emergence of aspect markers.- From possessive verbs to perfective marker.- Systematic changes of negative markers.- Emergence of verb reduplication.- Boundedness of predicate.- New information-organizing principle.- Emergence of verb-copying construction.- Emergence of scalar construction.- Change of comparative construction.- Morphology of adjectives and adverbs.- Lexical sources for passives.- Structural changes of passives.- Emergence of disposal construction.- Competition between disposal markers.- Change of relative clauses.- Emergence of nominal classifiers.- Emergence of verbal classifiers.- Grammaticalization of constructional particle.- Emergence of plural marker.- Developments of diminutive marker.- Verbal conceptualization and grammaticalization.- Unbalanced developments in dialects.- Word order and language development.- Language contacts and change.