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Article published In:
Functions of Language
Vol. 30:2 (2023) ► pp.137–158

Do ‘say’ verbs really grammaticalize into complementizers through clause combination?

Evidence from Chinese shuō ‘say’

ORCID logo | Sun Yat-sen University
| Beijing Foreign Studies University

When a ‘say’ clause is combined with a quoted-speech clause, one of two hypothetical pathways may be followed: (a) a complementation pathway on which the ‘say’ clause takes the quoted-speech clause as its complement clause and thus becomes its matrix clause; (b) a conjoining pathway which involves no syntactic operation but rather the loss of a prosodic gap between the two. Following the second pathway, ‘say’ may become grammaticalized into a quotative particle. On neither pathway is ‘say’ grammaticalized into a complementizer. It is proposed that cross-linguistically so-called ‘say’ complementizers, including the alleged Chinese complementizer shuō, are more likely to be not complementizers but rather quotative particles.

Keywords: ‘say’ verb, shuō, complementizer, quotative particle
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Chinese clause-introducing shuō: A paradox
  • 3.Two hypothetical pathways for clause combination in Chinese
    • 3.1Hypothetical complementation pathway
    • 3.2Hypothetical conjoining pathway
  • 4.Re-examining the syntactic status of the so-called Chinese shuō complementizer
  • 5.Re-examining so-called ‘say’ complementizers in other languages
  • 6.Conclusion and further comments
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 29 November 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.21023.den
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