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Passing is giving

The origin and historical development of the polyfunctional morpheme ti42 in Tunxi Hui Chinese

ORCiD logo with link | College of Professional and Continuing Education, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
ORCiD logo with link | The University of Hong Kong
Published online: 2 May 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.24001.lu
Abstract
This paper focuses on the origin of a polyfunctional morpheme ti42 in Tunxi Hui Chinese, a little-studied Hui Sinitic language with about 140,000 speakers in Tunxi, Anhui Province of China. This versatile morpheme represents a radical syncretism of nine disparate functions, including that between the lexical verb give and the allative, locative, and temporal marking, which is seldom reported in the literature. By first-hand synchronic data and the historical comparative method, we propose that ti42 originated as a send-type verb *diai6 ‘pass’ in Middle Chinese, which has extended to a general ditransitive verb give in modern Tunxi Hui. During this process, it has developed into two separate grammaticalization clines, one from ‘pass’ to the allative, locative, and temporal markers, and the other from give to recipient, beneficiary, purpose, permissive, and passive markers. The polysemy of ti42 sheds light on the complex processes of semantic shift from pass to give, and language-internal and contact-induced polygrammaticalization.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Polyfunctionality of give
    • 1.2Introduction to Tunxi Hui
  • 2.Data and methodology
  • 3.Polysemy of ti42 ‘give’ in Tunxi Hui Chinese
    • 3.1The lexical verb give
    • 3.2As a recipient marker
    • 3.3Benefactive marker
    • 3.4Purpose marker
    • 3.5Permissive marker
    • 3.6Passive marker
  • 4.Ti42 as an allative marker, locative marker, and temporal marker
  • 5.The etymon of the morpheme ti42in Tunxi Hui Chinese
    • 5.1Historical comparative analysis of ti42
    • 5.2From the Monotransitive verb pass to the Ditransitive verb give
    • 5.3Grammaticalization from passive to allative, locative, and temporal markers
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Data availability
  • Ethics and consent
  • Author contribution
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • Declaration of competing interest
  • References
References (83)
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