A Typological Study of Resultative Constructions in Cantonese and the Zhuang languages: With the Main Focus on the Issue of the Geographic Contiguity

2018 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K02528
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Chuo University
• Principal Investigator: ISHIMURA HIROSHI 中央大学, 文学部, 教授 (00327975)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2019-03-31
• Keywords: 結果構文 / 漢語方言 / タイ系言語 / 言語類型地理論 / 使役性 / 語順

Outline of Final Research Achievements

VOR (the“verb-object-resultative complement”word order) that prevailed in Middle Chinese is still used in South China, although it has basically disappeared in North China. The research suggests that VOR is usually limited to irrealis uses such as the subjunctive mood and an imperative sentence, because it is a syntactic form that shows lower transitivity than VRO (the“verb-resultative complement-object”word order). However, frontier languages spoken mainly in parts of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region have highly productive VOR that can describe realis situations. VOR prevails in these areas because of “language contact” with Kam-Tai languages that always use VOR, especially the Zhuang languages. This observation shows that the origin of VOR spoken among the frontier languages cannot be entirely dated back to Middle Chinese. Different from the prevailing opinions like Hashimoto (1978), the grammatical mechanism of Chinese is not identical with that of Kam-Tai languages.

Free Research Field

中国語学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

漢語系言語とタイ系言語は、どちらも孤立型言語に属するが、前者は語順の違いによって他動性（使役性）の強弱を表す言語であるのに対して、後者は語順の違いが他動性の程度を表すための文法的手段にはなっていない。本研究の調査・分析によって、広東語の結果構文（複合型）とチワン語の結果構文（分離型）は、形式的側面に着目すると地理的推移による連続性が認められるが、文法的には異質なメカニズムをもつことが明らかにされた。本研究の成果は、孤立型言語どうしの比較・対照に新たな視点を提示することができるばかりでなく、漢語方言文法や言語接触、結果構文分析の領域にも新たな研究基盤を構築するために寄与するものと考える。