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

本研究对前唐汉语动词短语的精确结构进行了探讨。前和早期中世纪时期（公元前2世纪至公元6世纪）（前唐朝汉语）是一个重要的过渡时期，在此期间，许多现代汉语的词源结构都得到了发展。对这种语言的历时分析不仅从一般语言学的角度来看是有价值的，而且对于系统地教学这种与古典语言和现代语言都有很大不同的语言也是有价值的。在这一时期新形成的结构可以在佛教文献中得到很好的研究，佛教文献被认为比传统的文言文学表现出更多的乡土特征，因此更适合于语言学研究。在学术文献中，人们一直认为佛教经典中明显的语言变化是由于它们大多是翻译文本这一事实所引起的。本研究遵循一种不同的假设，认为早期佛教文献中的创新可以用汉语句法的基本约束来解释，许多新结构是从已有的古典和汉代汉语结构发展而来，并根据不同类型语言翻译的要求进行扩展；时态、时态和情态系统特别支持这一假设。在本研究中，对情态表达和情态表达的研究，对不同类型情态表达变化的分析，以及情态和情态之间的相互作用，都是对正在进行的关于情态的激烈辩论的贡献。关于汉语，义务情态的表达是研究前唐汉语的一个特别有趣的问题。在早期佛教典籍中，道义情态的不同语言实现数量显著增加；这导致了一种假设，即与古典和汉代文学相比，在经常表达建议的佛教文本中，道义形态的表达获得了更多的相关性。因此，它们引起了情态表达的变化，这种变化不能单凭这些文本大多是翻译自表现出丰富词形的语言这一事实来解释。研究结果不仅有助于理解中世纪前和早期，特别是早期佛教文献，而且还为一般语言学研究提供了汉语数据，以完善关于时态、时态和情态普遍结构的一般语言学假设。汉语作为少数几种非印欧语系的语言之一，其丰富的语料库可以追溯到很久以前，在我看来，迄今为止，在一般的语言学研究中没有得到充分的考虑。

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.