Grammaticalization of Connectives in Mandarin Chinese: A Corpus-Based Study ∗

Abstract

This paper probes into the grammaticalization of three connectives in Mandarin Chinese, namely ＂yinwei＂ 'because,' ＂suoyi＂ so,' and ＂ranhou＂ 'then.' In accordance with Traugott's (1995a:1) adverbial cline, we examine the three connectives' paths of grammaticalization, and show how their polysemous uses in the present day fall within the prediction of her adverbial cline. Moreover, for further explanation of their functions as discourse markers which serve communicative purposes, we explicate the concept of subjectification and intersubjectification proposed by Traugott (1995b, 1999) and Traugott & Dasher (2002) and Blakemore's (1988, 1992) relevance-based framework.