Dr. Jie Xu

<jie@hawaii.edu>

National University of Singapore

Two Types of Focus Devices in the Historical Development of Chinese Grammar

Following Culicover and Rochemont (1983, 1990) and Horvath (1986), we assume that the essentially semantic conception of ‘Focus’ can be characterized as a formal syntactic feature [+F], and this feature, once associated with a certain syntactic constituent, may trigger various syntactic operations. Cross-linguistically, there are two types of Focus devices, one is to insert a Focus Mark before the focused constituent (Focus-Marking, Insert-α) as is attested in Malay, and another is to move the focused constituent to a more prominent position (Focus-Fronting, Move- α) as observed in Hungarian. 

Interestingly, modern Chinese contrasts sharply with Archaic Chinese in the choice between two general Focus devices: Modern Mandarin Chinese is a typical Focus-Marking language with shi (是) as a Focus Mark whereas Archaic Chinese is a Focus-fronting language in which the focused constituents are usually moved to a position between the subject and the main verb. Obviously, the Chinese language has undergone a typological shift with respect to focus devices in its historical development. The questions are simply ‘why’ ‘when’ and ’how’. 

In this talk, I will review some historical data, and argue that the development of shi itself has played the key role in this typological shift. Originally, shi is a regular pronoun meaning ‘this’ or ‘these’ in Archaic Chinese, which has neither a copular verb nor a Focus Mark. Archaic Chinese has no choice but appeals to the option of Focus-Fronting. As shi later developed to become a copular verb and then a Focus Mark, the Chinese language has shifted to the option of Focus –Marking. Just as our proposal predicts, the emergence of Focus Mark shi coincides exactly with the end of the fronting of focused constituents (around 500 A.D.).