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Article published In:
Diachronica
Vol. 39:1 (2022) ► pp.88–127

Bidirectionality between modal and conditional constructions in Mandarin Chinese

A constructionalization account

ORCID logo | University of Edinburgh

This paper proposes that modal constructions can develop into conditional constructions in Mandarin Chinese and vice versa. Therefore, bidirectionality exists between these kinds of constructions diachronically. While bidirectionality is an apparent violation of unidirectionality, both directions of change are shown to be regular cases of procedural constructionalization, enabled by the fact that modal and conditional constructions can perform identical indirect speech acts (i.e., they are performatively equivalent) and instances of one may be morphosyntactically categorized as the other in Chinese (i.e., they are morphosyntactically vague). A crosslinguistically generalizable prediction is then proposed: bidirectionality is possible if instances of two constructions are performatively equivalent and morphosyntactically vague with respect to each other in certain contexts.

Keywords: modals, conditionals, constructionalization, diachronic construction grammar, grammaticalization, inferencing, performative equivalence, vagueness
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The invited inferencing theory of semantic change and diachronic construction grammar
    • 2.1The frameworks
    • 2.2Contexts in constructionalization
  • 3.Data
  • 4.Modal and conditional constructions in Chinese
    • 4.1Modal and conditional constructions characterized
    • 4.2Vagueness between modals and protasis connectives
    • 4.3Morphosyntactic contexts of vagueness
  • 5.From modality to conditionality
    • 5.1The modal and conditional xū constructions
    • 5.2[xū p shǐ dé] as a construction
    • 5.3[xū p shǐ dé] as the critical context
  • 6.From conditionality to modality
    • 6.1The conditional and modal fēi constructions
    • 6.2[fēi p bù kě] as the critical context
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.The bidirectional prediction
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 14 September 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.20047.kuo
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