Two Later Changes of the Sentence-final you(有)in Yuan Baihua
In Yuan baihua(a.k.a.the vernacular Chinese in Yuan Dynasty),the character 有(yǒu)commonly used at the end of a sentence appears in two constructions:"N+有",which indicates"exists in N"or"possesses N",and"V(+particle)+有(+particle)",which conveys various aspectual information of V.In the bilingual speakers'spo-ken text Zhèngtǒng Línróng Lù(正统临戎录),composed in early Ming,the usage of"N+有"to express time began to emerge marking an extension of the locational"N+有"construction in bilingual speech.The previous"V+有"con-struction attained new functions to indicate future tense and imperative mood,suggesting a divergence between spoken and written language,where the spoken"V+有"specifically indicates"present,"aligning with the present-future tense suffixes in Middle Mongolian,the former subsequently adopted the future and imperative usages of the suffixes.This case illustrates two points:first,language contact documents involving different producers and users exhibit both dis-tinctions and connections,warranting a categorized investigation;second,the different syntactic functions of polysemous functional morphemes may also undergo semantic/functional transfer,occurring not only in indirect contact but also in direct contact.
Yuan Baihuasentence-final you(有)semantic/functional transfer