Abstract
Investigating the shi-de cleft construction in northern dialects of Mandarin Chinese, this paper argues for the novel ongoing creation of a new past tense morpheme from the incorporation of a D0 element (de) into the verb. The re-analysis is pragmatically suggested to result from the strengthening of a past time conversational implicature commonly associated with the shi-de construction, and syntactically to constitute an example of 'lateral grammaticalization', a process in which a functional head from one domain (e.g., the DP) may under certain circumstances undergo re-interpretation as an essentially equivalent functional head in a second domain (e.g., the CP/clausal domain). The analysis proposed resolves certain apparent contradictions in the positioning and interpretation of objects, adverbs, and wh-adjuncts in shi-de forms, and results in the conclusion that speakers actually maintain a dual analysis of de as either a D0 or a T0 depending on the temporal orientation of the shi-de form.
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Simpson, A., Wu, Z. From D to T – Determiner Incorporationand the Creation of Tense. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 11, 169–209 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014934915836
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014934915836