Not Just Speaking of "Speaking" On the Syntax-Driven Mechanism of Grammaticalization.

This paper aims to investigate the syntactic mechanisms behind the grammaticalization and lexicalization of saying verbs from the perspectives of linguistic typology and comparative syntax. It is proposed that, in addition to the evolution from lexical categories to functional categories along the clausal spine, there is also a mechanism that merges the verb shuo 'say' into a neighboring phrase/clause, which is in turn reanalyzed as either an adverbial or a complement depending on its morpho-syntactic makeups. To use an idiom, this means that "It is easier to touch the moon at a pavilion near the waterfront." The result is a plethora of usages such as quotative, clause-typing, evidential, subjunctive, concessive, topic- marking, and enumerative. They show up at various levels of syntactic structure, while heading the corresponding functional projections. At the final stage of its evolution, shuo may undergo extreme semantic bleaching and become a linker, which very often can be dropped freely. We substantiate this observation by drawing evidence from Classical Chinese, Formosan languages, and the grammaticalization of shi 'be' in Modern Mandarin, which can be seen as an excellent example of convergent evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]