Delexicalizing di

This paper traces the semantic extension of the Chinese locative/spatial noun di (‘bottom’) into a nominalizer, which further develops into a relativizer and genitive marker, and also into an adverbial subordinator and an attitudinal or stance marker. As subordinator and stance marker, di is generally phonetically reduced to de. Indeed, de has now largely replaced di in contemporary Chinese. Similar developments involving the reanalysis of head-final (i.e. clause-final) nominalizers as sentence-final mood particles are also observed in the case of Chinese nominalizer zhe, and are attested in other Chinese dialects as well (e.g. Cantonese ge3 and Chaozhou kai). Many other verb-final languages also show similar syncretism involving head-final nominalizers being recruited for sentence-final mood marking functions.