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Part of
Current Studies in Chinese Language and Discourse: Global context and diverse perspectives
Edited by Yun Xiao and Linda Tsung
[Studies in Chinese Language and Discourse 10] 2019
► pp. 28–56

Chapter 3
Usage based language change and exemplar representations in Beijing Mandarin Chinese

| Ohio University

This study offers support to usage-based studies to promote the importance of everyday language use in language development and grammaticalization. Specifically, the study presents a new construction in Beijing Mandarin Chinese that currently co-occurs with its original form, both in spoken language and written texts. The change is another instance of phono-syntactic conspiracy (Tao 2002, 2006, 2009). It starts from phonological reduction and ends in a syntactic change of a highly frequently used rhetorical question 不是…吗: ‘Isn’t it the case that….’ However, the process differs from previous findings (Bybee 2010) in that the grammaticalization process involves usage frequency as well as cognitive, cultural and social factors. The findings further support the view that language and grammar are fostered and conditioned through human communication.

Keywords: grammaticalization, frequency, chunking, phonological fusion, Mandarin tones, phono-syntactic conspiracy, discourse-functional linguistics, bu35shi…ma (不是…吗)?
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Mandarin Chinese and the current study
    • 2.1Mandarin Chinese pertaining to the present study
    • 2.2The current study
  • 3.Phono-syntactic conspiracy and grammaticalization
  • 4.Usage-caused grammatical change
    • 4.1The data and the specific construction of this study
    • 4.2Usage frequency, consonant lenition and an optional allophone
    • 4.3Tone sandhi, the rhotic approximant and exemplar representations of /sh/
    • 4.4Language variation, grammaticalization, and language change
      • 4.4.1Misperception and transcription
      • 4.4.2Impact of 普通话 Putonghua ‘common language’
    • 4.5Interim summary
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 15 April 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scld.10.03tao
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