open access

https://hdl.handle.net/2115/34802

The complementary distribution of the two interrogative pronouns with initial *d in Classical Chinese

中国語

case marking system

2006

上海教育出版社

漢語史学報

6

71-85

This paper deals with the grammatical distribution of interrogative pronouns 孰Shu and 誰Shei having initial *d in Classical Chinese. The investigation is based mainly on Classical Chinese texts of 左傳Zuozhuan, 国語Guoyu, 論語Lunyu, 孟子Mengzi, and 呂氏春秋Lushichunqiu in terms of syntactic constraints and discourse function. In 論語Lunyu, 孟子Mengzi and 呂氏春秋Lushichunqiu, when 孰Shu or 誰Shei appears in syntactically ambiguous sentences such as “孰Shu/誰Shei+V2”or“孰Shu/誰Shei+V3(+O)” and refers to people (or a group of people), 孰Shu can only occur as a subject, not as an object. 誰Shei, on the other hand, can mostly occur as an object, almost never as a subject. That is to say, they are in complementary distribution. This can be interpreted that in these sentences the complementary occurrence between 孰Shu and 誰Shei functions as a case marking system, because in these three texts the grammatical differences between 孰Shu and 誰Shei in discourse levels are very small. Moreover, the development process of this syntactic distribution of 孰Shu and 誰Shei in 論語Lunyu and 孟子Mengzi is discussed, and an assumption is made that this came through the following process: (i) originally, the alternation of 孰Shu and 誰Shei was conditioned by both discourse and syntactic levels, (ii) later, it changed to be conditioned by only the syntactic level, and the syntactic distribution of 孰Shu and 誰Shei became complementary. One of the causes of this change must have been a desire to reduce ambiguousness in syntactically ambiguous sentences. As mentioned above, the case marking system by the complementary occurrence between 孰Shu and 誰Shei in Classical Chinese is not an inflectional case marking but a kind of a suppletion.

学術雑誌論文

Accepted Manuscript