On the Origin of the Third Person Pronoun Usage offu夫in Archaic Chinese with Parallel Evidence from Tai-Kadai Languages
The common view among the circle holds that the use of fu(夫)as a third person pronoun in Archaic Chinese derives from its demonstrative pronoun usage.With parallel phenomenon from Tai-Kadai as well as Miao-Yao languages,the typical neighbouring languages with a long history of contact and sharing much common areal features with Chinese,the paper claims that the third person pronoun usage of fu in archaic Chinese may be traced back toits noun usage meaning'adult man'.The paper further suggests that third person pronouns developing from people nouns is in fact a common cross-linguistically attested grammaticalization path.
classifiersthird person pronounsdemonstrativesTai-KadaiMiao-Yaoarchaic Chinese
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
