| Abstract |
“Ji暨, ” “yu與,” and “ji及” in the Early Ancient Chinese followed a pattern of the grammaticalization chains of “comitative verb > comitative preposition > coordinating conjunction ,”as revealed by Liu and Peyraube (1994) and Wu, Fu-Xiang (2003). However, it is noted that “ji及”, in particular, derived the function of coordinating conjunction from verbs. In the grammaticalization continuum of “comitative verb > comitative preposition > coordinating conjunction,” there was an either-or usage of the transition stage in the gradually changing process. Precisely speaking of respective evolving stages, it is “comitative verb > comitative verb/ comitative preposition > comitative preposition / coordinating conjunction > coordinating conjunction.” The process from comitative verb to comitative preposition and from comitative preposition to coordinating conjunction was formed through a re-analysis. The usage of comitative verbs, comitative prepositions, and coordinating conjunctions is determined by linguistic contexts, verb types, and inserted adverbs. The comitative preposition “yu與”, on the other hand, represents the function of presenting people in conversation and interlocutors, deriving from the referred comitative and verbs that collocate “yu與” are equipped with a quasi-reciprocal semantic feature. Those newly comitative prepositions emerging after the Medieval Chinese, such as “gong共,” “he和,” “tong同,” and “gen跟” had a similar development route. During the grammaticalization process, the development was resulted from the bleaching of the meaning.
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