Title

You ‘have’ in Taiwan Mandarin and Dialects─on the Social and Historical Aspects of Grammatical Theories

Author

Wei-Tien Dylan Tsai

Genre

Article  

Pages

495-528

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Language

Chinese

Key words

You-sentences, Chinese Syntax, Historical Syntax, Dialectical Syntax, Semantic Theory, Syntactic Theory

Abstract

    This study shows that you ‘have’ has gone through a semantic extension, i.e., possessive > locative existential > existential, and then branched into two paths: one leads to the perfective and assertive usages of you ; the other leads to its partitive and specific construal. Along with these developments, the syntactic of you , as well as its corresponding syntactic position, started to evolve and diversity. We begin with the dialectical variations and historical changes of you , and show how to capture underlying generalizations obscured by language contact and grammaticalization. On the other hand, dialectical and diachronic evidence equally obliges us to appreciate the complexity and diversity of linguistic investigation, and to bring more insights from the empirical front in place of theoretical stipulations.