Clitic pronouns in Archaic Chinese

Abstract

Abstract This article provides evidence for the so far neglected existence of two clitic pronouns, yǐ 以 and yǔ 與, in Archaic Chinese (10th c. – 3rd c. BC) in immediately verb-adjacent position: ‘yǐ/yǔ-V’. While yǔ only encodes the comitative/associative, yǐ encodes all kinds of (argument and adjunct) roles, depending on the semantics of the verb involved. We argue that the clitic pronouns yǐ and yǔ can neither be analysed as stranded prepositions left behind after extraction of their complement (as, e.g., in English) nor as orphan prepositions, i.e., PPs with an in situ null pronoun as complement (as, e.g., in French). This ties in with the general ban against prepositions lacking an overt complement, observed throughout the history of Chinese.