Grammaticalization and lexicalization have been two major issues in the study of diachronic change in the past few decades. Drawing evidence from Western languages, researchers have uncovered a number of characteristics of the process of grammaticalization and lexicalization, as well as the relationship between the two. However, the question remains whether or not those characteristics are applicable to genetically unrelated and typologically different languages, such as Chinese. The contributors of this volume attempt to answer just this question. Based on Chinese historical data from the past three thousand years, five articles in the volume investigate the development of a certain grammatical category: the definite article (M. Fang), modal verbs of volition (A. Peyraube and M. Li), the classifier class (J.Z. Xing), the repeater class (C. Zhang), and the process of lexicalization (X. Dong), while the remaining four articles are case studies of unique grammatical words which have all undergone a complicated process of grammaticalization and some involved lexicalization: the sentence particle ye (Q. Chen), the versatile directional verb lái (C. Liu), the degree adverb hen (M. Liu and C. Chang), and the giving verb gei (F. Tsao). All these studies have identified tendencies of diachronic change in Chinese and some of them have also revealed certain typological characteristics that Chinese has compared to other languages.

Based on comparative analyses of diachronic data, the articles in this volume address both theoretical and methodological issues in the study of grammaticalization and lexicalization in both Eastern and Western languages. The central question raised and discussed in this volume is how, if any, typological properties of the two genetically unrelated language families interact with the processes of grammaticalization and lexicalization.

This volume intends to fill the gap in the grammaticalization studies setting as its goal the systematic description of grammaticalization processes in genealogically and structurally diverse languages. To address the problem of the limitations of the secondary sources for grammaticalization studies, the editors rely on sketches of grammaticalization phenomena from experts in individual languages guided by a typological questionnaire.

Based on Chinese historical data collected over the past three thousand years, the articles in the volume investigate the development of new grammatical categories and the process of lexicalization and grammaticalization of unique grammatical words. All these studies have identified tendencies of diachronic change in Chinese or typological characteristics that Chinese has compared to other languages.

The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Chinese Language is an invaluable resource for language learners and linguists of Chinese worldwide, those interested readers of Chinese literature and cultures, and scholars in Chinese studies. Featuring the research on the changing landscape of the Chinese language by a number of eminent academics in the field, this volume will meet the academic, linguistic and pedagogical needs of anyone interested in the Chinese language: from Sinologists to Chinese linguists, as well as teachers and learners of Chinese as a second language. The encyclopedia explores a range of topics: from research on oracle bone and bronze inscriptions, to Chinese language acquisition, to the language of the mass media. This reference offers a guide to shifts over time in thinking about the Chinese language as well as providing an overview of contemporary themes, debates and research interests. The editors and contributors are assisted by an editorial board comprised of the best and most experienced sinologists world-wide. The reference includes an introduction, written by the editor, which places the assembled texts in their historical and intellectual context. The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Language is destined to be valued by scholars and students as a vital research resource.

This book is the first on Cantonese that deals with the grammaticalization phenomenon systematically. Focusing on a group of twelve directional particles, this book tracks their grammaticalization pathways from full-fledged directional verbs, to directional particles indicating meanings relating to tense-aspect, modality, and quantification, in the post-verbal position. Some of these particles have undergone further grammaticalization to convey speaker’s subjective as well as intersubjective stances. This book is also unique in its diachronic component. Examples in the book are drawn from various sources including early Cantonese pedagogical texts, Cantonese films, and contemporary Cantonese corpora, with data ranging from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. This book will be a valuable resource not only for all linguists interested in the development of grammatical forms, but also for teachers and students in conversation/discourse analysis, psychology, and anthropology interested in deepening their understanding of the interaction between language structure and use.

This book extends the traditional research perspective of single sentences and contexts to the textual structure of real discourse materials. Taking discourse functional grammar as its theoretical orientation, the book combines relevant theories with Chinese practice to work on a number of topics, including discourse phenomena and syntactic integration, the information status and discourse function of special syntactic structures, the emergence of discourse functions of metadiscourse components, and stylistic differences and their syntactic manifestations. Syntactic-semantic laws and discourse functions are examined in relation to each other, which better reveals their inner connection; a focus on the shaping of grammatical structures by interactional factors brings to light the functional motivations behind grammatical rules. In contrast to traditional Chinese grammar research, which takes individual simple or complex sentences as the object of study, this book mainly analyses grammatical phenomena that span sentences. By broadening the scope of research, it enables further exploration of issues that are difficult to address satisfactorily at the sentence level, thus enriching the study of Chinese grammar. The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of interactional linguistics, Chinese linguistics and functional grammar.