Affiliation:
1. The University of Arizona
Abstract
Abstract
In modern Chinese, the adverb chi-zao is regarded as an adjective-adjective compound, with
morphemes chi ‘late’ and zao ‘early’ as extreme poles in a gradable temporality. The formation
of chi-zao as an antonymous compound has not received much attention from a diachronic construction grammar
perspective. This study reports on the historical change of chi-zao as evidence showing the interplay of
antonymous compounds and constructionalization in modern Chinese. Based on corpus analysis, I found that the formation of
chi-zao as a lexical construction inherits from previous changes but emerges instantaneously in Pre-Modern
Chinese, where its form has been condensed and its meaning has been bleached to indicate subjectivity. Three arguments shed light
on the model of constructionalization: (1) constructionalization at the compound level can be associated with three motivations:
subjectivity, frequency, and metaphor; and (2) the operation of constructionalization is at work not only at the sentential and
phrasal level but also at the morphological level of compound word formation in Chinese; (3) rhetoric as an output of language use
plays a part in the development of constructionalization in relation to antonymous compounds.
Publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Language and Linguistics