Fangqiong Zhan
List of John Benjamins publications in which Fangqiong Zhan is involved.
Journal
ISSN 1877-7031 | E‑ISSN 1877‑8798
Title
The Development of the Chinese Cleft Construction: A diachronic constructional approach
Fangqiong Zhan
This book explores the development of the Chinese cleft construction through the lens of Diachronic Construction Grammar. Focusing on shi as an invariant copula, it examines the VP de cleft, the V de O cleft, and the bare shi cleft, showing how each signals contrastive and specificational meaning.… read more[Constructional Approaches to Language, 41] 2026. xviii, 207 pp.
2025 Re-evaluating the dynamics of subjectification, intersubjectification, and textualization from a constructional perspective: The development of the pragmatic marker jiushi in Chinese Chinese Language and Discourse 16:2, pp. 201–233 | Article
This paper examines the pragmatic functions of the pragmatic marker (pm, cf. Fraser 2009) jiushi in Chinese and further categorizes its functions as a discourse marker (dm) indicating elaboration and contrast, and a discourse management marker (dmm) signaling topic establishment, hesitation and… read more
2025 The development of the Chinese multifunctional construction V+ qilai: From a complement-taking predicate to a discourse marker Pragmatics: Online-First Articles | Article
This paper examines the multiple functions of the construction V+qilai as a discourse marker (DM) in Modern Chinese, as well as its historical development. I argue that V+qilai serves various functions in Modern Chinese, including as an elaborative, contrastive, inferential, and topic shift… read more
2023 A study on the semantic change of the Chinese negative adverb Bùshèn ( 不甚 ) Lexical semantics towards the big-data era, Liu, Meichun and Chunyu Kit (eds.), pp. 1–17 | Article
This paper aims to account for the multiple interpretations of the Chinese negative degree adverb bùshèn (不甚). In Xiandai Hanyu Dacidian Shangce (Modern Chinese Dictionary Volume I) (Ruan & Guo (eds) 2009), bùshèn is defined as ‘the degree is not very high’, which can be interpreted as ‘not… read more
2023 The development of the Chinese V de O cleft construction: A constructional approach Studies in Language 47:2, pp. 318–349 | Article
This paper addresses the development of the Chinese V de O cleft construction, and how the cleft constructional network was developed in the history of Chinese. It is argued that V de O clefts emerged in the 13th century which was about 300 years later than VP de clefts. A key factor in their… read more
2022 A constructional account of the development of the Chinese stance discourse marker běnlái Journal of Historical Pragmatics 23:2, pp. 245–284 | Article
This paper examines the emergence of the Chinese adverb běnlái and its further development into a stance discourse marker (sdm). Most previous studies consider the epistemic modal adverb běnlái (‘indeed, truly’) to have originated from the temporal adverb běnlái (‘originally’). Based on the… read more
2020 A study of the development of the Chinese correlative comparative construction from the perspective of constructionalization Diachronica 37:1, pp. 83–126 | Article
The paper addresses the emergence and development of the Chinese correlative comparative construction (CrCC) from the perspective of constructionalization. Most previous historical studies of the CrCC take a grammaticalization approach (e.g., Long 2013), focusing mainly on morphosyntax alone… read more
2019 The development of the Chinese copula shì construction: A diachronic constructional perspective Functions of Language 26:2, pp. 139–176 | Article
This paper investigates the development of the copula shì construction in Chinese from the perspective of diachronic construction grammar (Traugott & Trousdale 2013). In prior work the development has been conceptualized in a grammaticalization framework, with focus on the individual expression… read more
2015 The constructionalization of the Chinese cleft construction Studies in Language 39:2, pp. 459–491 | Article
This paper addresses the emergence and development of the Chinese cleft construction, with particular attention to the period from Early Archaic Chinese through Late Medieval Chinese. Prototype copulas are typically of the form [NP SHI NP], are predicational or specificational, and cue information… read more