The diachronic development of the verb phrase in Pre-Tang Chinese: Aspect and Modality from Classical to Early Medieval Chinese

在这项研究中，唐前汉语动词短语的确切结构是有争议的。中世纪前期和早期(公元前2-6世纪)(唐代以前的汉语)是现代汉语许多来源结构发展的重要过渡时期。对这门语言进行历时分析，不仅从一般语言学的角度来看是值得的，而且对于一种既不同于古典语言又不同于现代语言的系统教学来说，也是值得的。这一时期新发展起来的结构在佛教文本中的研究尤为突出，佛教文本被认为比传统的文言文学具有更多的白话化特征，因此更适合于语言学研究。在学术文献中，人们一直认为佛教文本中明显的语言变化是由这样一个事实引起的，即它们大多是翻译文本。这项研究遵循一个不同的假设，认为早期佛教文献中观察到的创新可以在汉语句法的基本限制下得到解释，许多新的结构是在文言和汉代汉语已有结构的基础上发展起来的，并根据不同语言类型翻译的要求而扩展；时态、体和情态系统特别支持这一假设。在这项研究中，体态和情态表达、不同类别情态表达的变化分析以及情态和体之间的相互作用是当前正在进行的关于情态的激烈辩论的一个重要方面。关于汉语，道义情态的表达在研究唐以前的汉语中是特别有趣的。在早期佛教文本中，道义情态的不同语言实现的数量显著增加；这导致了一种假设，即道义情态的表达在经常表达忠告的佛教文本中比在古典文学和汉代文学中获得了更多的相关性。因此，它们导致了情态表达的变化，这不能仅用以下事实来解释：这些文本大多是从表现出丰富的动词形态的语言翻译而来的。这项研究的结果不仅旨在促进对中世纪前期和早期，特别是早期佛教文献的理解，而且还旨在为一般语言学研究提供汉语语料，以提炼关于普遍的时态、体和情态结构的一般语言学假设。汉语作为历史上为数不多的拥有丰富语料库的非印欧语系语言之一，在我看来，在一般的语言学研究中，迄今为止还没有充分考虑到它的相关性。

In this study the precise architecture of the verb phrase in the language of Pre-Tang Chinese is at issue. The Pre- and the Early Medieval periods (2nd c. BCE to 6th c. CE) (Pre-Tang Chinese) constitute an important transitional period during which many of the source structures of Modern Mandarin develop. The diachronic analysis of this language is not only worthwhile from a general linguistic perspective, but also for the systematic teaching of a language which differs considerably from both the Classical and the Modern languages. The structures newly developed during this period can be studied particularly well in the Buddhist texts which are considered to show more vernacular features than the traditional wenyan literature and to be thus more suitable for linguistic studies. In the scholarly literature it has been assumed that the linguistic changes evident in the Buddhist texts were induced by the fact that most of them are translation texts. This study follows a different hypothesis and assumes that the innovations to be observed in the Early Buddhist literature can be explained within the basic constraints of Chinese syntax and that many of the new structures develop from already existing structures of Classical and Han period Chinese and are extended according to the requirements to be met in translations from typologically different languages; the system of tense, aspect, and modality argues particularly for this hypothesis. In this study aspectual and modal expressions, the analysis of changes in the expression of the different categories of modality, and the interplay between modality and aspect are at issue as a contribution to the lively ongoing debate on modality. With regard to Chinese, the expressions of deontic modality are of particular interest in a study of Pre-Tang Chinese. In the early Buddhist texts, the number of different linguistic realisations of deontic modality increases considerably; this has led to the hypothesis that expressions of deontic modality gain more relevance in the Buddhist texts, which frequently express advice, than they had in the Classical and Han period literature. They thus cause a change in the expressions of modality which cannot be explained alone by the fact that most of these texts are translations from languages which exhibit a rich verbal morphology. The results of the study are not only intended to facilitate the understanding of the Pre- and Early Medieval and especially the early Buddhist literature, but also to make the Chinese data available for general linguistic studies in order to refine the general linguistic hypotheses with regard to universal structures of tense, aspect, and modality. The relevance of the Chinese language as one of the few non Indo-European languages with a rich linguistic corpus dating far back in history has, in my view, hitherto not been taken into account sufficiently in general linguistic studies.