GLOSS and the Department of Linguistics Colloquium
November 7th, 3pm in 100 Agate Hall
Zhuo Jing-Schmidt and Xinjia Peng
East Asian Languages & Literatures
University of Oregon
The grammaticalization of disjunction: A history of constructional changes in Chinese
Recent research on the typology of disjunction or disjunctive coordination suggests a conceptual
connection between disjunction and irrealis constructions despite great morphosyntactic
variability in the linguistic representation of disjunction across languages (Mauri 2008),
confirming earlier observations of disjunctive coordinators being polysemous with irrealis
meanings (Merlan 1982; Mous 2007). Scholars disagree, however, on how to treat the
relationship between dedicated disjunctive coordinators and irrealis markers. Contra Mauri who
makes a formal distinction between disjunction and irrealis marking, Pederson (2013) argues that
disjunction is best analyzed as a specialized case of irrealis constructions.
To better understand the relationship between disjunction and irreality in particular and the
typology of disjunction in general, a diachronic perspective is necessary. Mithun (1988) and
Haspelmath (2007) both point out the degree of grammaticalization as relevant to questions
about the typology of coordination of which disjunction is a semantic sub-category. Haspelmath
(2007:49) contends that the lack of dedicated coordination constructions in some languages may
be seen as a “low degree of grammaticalization” rather than a complete absence of coordination.
He argues that regardless of the relative degree of grammaticalization of coordination markers in
individual languages, there is high cross-linguistic similarity and consistency in the source and
trajectory of their grammaticaliztion.
In this study we trace the source and trajectory of grammaticalization that led to the emergence
of standard disjunction in Chinese, drawing implications both for the linguistic typology and for
the diachrony of disjunction. Close examinations of historical corpus data revealed non-linear,
gradual micro-changes triggered by a series of form-meaning reanalyses in construction-specific
contexts, which is enabled by an isolating typology characterized by "precategoriality" at the
lexical level and "hidden complexity" at the syntactic level (Bisang 2010:246). Specifically, the
results (1) demonstrate the pivotal role of construction-specific form-meaning reanalysis in the
micro-changes crucial to the emergence of disjunction, (2) reveal doubt and uncertainty as the
historical conceptual source of disjunction, one which is easily obscured by orthographic
differentiation, (3) confirm the conceptual and structural continuity from irrealis constructions to
disjunctive constructions, (4) highlight frequency of use as a driving force in the emergence of
novel constructional meanings and the entrenchment of constructional schemas, and (5) provide
further evidence of the role played by an isolating typology in syntactic and categorial
reassignment as a key step in grammaticalization.