The diachronic development of the Chinese passive

From the WEI ... SUO passive to the long passive

Authors

  • Yin Li

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18148/hs/0.vi0.51

Abstract

This article discusses the diachronic development of the Chinese long passive. The diachronic analysis is built on structural analysis of the long passive and the WEI ... SUO passive. I show that both constructions involve a highly restricted embedded clause (a vP) and that both are derived via A?-movement. Based on their structural parallelism, I argue that the WEI ... SUO passive, which first appeared in Late Archaic Chinese (fifth century BCE ~ third century BCE), is the direct ancestor of the long passive. The long passive inherits its A? properties and biclausal structure from the WEI ... SUO passive. I also show that the diachronic development from the WEI ... SUO passive to the long passive took place in two steps: (i) the loss of SUO following a morphophonological change in Early Middle Chinese (second century BCE ~ second century CE, and (ii) the replacement of WEI by BEI in Middle Chinese (third century CE ~ sixth century CE).

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Published

2019-09-10

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Section

Articles