The grammatical constructionalization of the imperfective-zhe in Chinese
Keywords: East Asian Languages and Cultures.

着 -zhe is one of the most frequently used morphemes in Modern Standard Chinese. Despite decades of research on the synchronic structure and the diachronic development of this aspect marker and related constructions, many unanswered questions remain regarding -zhe's function and emergence. By adopting a constructionalist approach, this thesis provides both a unified analysis of -zhe's function and a finer-grained account of the emergence of -zhe. This study argues that -zhe is an imperfective viewpoint marker whose function is to, in focus, signal an atelic situation resulting from a change of state or an atelic situation occurring after the initial point of a certain state/activity, following (Sun 2021b). The key feature of -zhe is atelicity. -Zhe may occur in all situation types except the two-point closed scale change. A constraint exists in which the occurrence of -zhe with a multi-point closed scale change necessitates a modifier if the noun phrase denoting the volume scale includes a plural numeral phrase. -Zhe is only available to stage-level statives, which are subject to change. This thesis proposes that stage-level statives can occur with the experiential -guo requiring repeatable situations, which suggests possibility of change. The imperfective viewpoint marker -zhe may occur in constructions that are not compositional (e.g., the intensifying construction [ADJindividual-stage -zhe ne]). This thesis then examines the small-step micro-changes in the emergence of -zhe. It is hypothesized that the serial verbs V ZHUO in the serial-verb construction [V ZHUO Oloc] developed into micro-constructions of the RVC [V-ZHAO] construction in the late Six Dynasties period (220-589 CE). The small-step micro-changes enabling the emergence of [V-ZHAO] include two steps. First, V and ZHUO take Oloc as their shared object. Second, the shared object is a common noun and is assigned the role of theme. Because temporal sequence sometimes implies causality, V ZHUO became [V-ZHAO] through analogization, which matches the ambiguous construct with the extant RVC construction, in the late Six Dynasties period (220-589 CE). In the Tang and Five Dynasties period (618-960 AD), the RVC [V-ZHAO] construction proliferated and then the word-formation schema [V-ZHAOaffixoid] arose, in which -ZHAO became an affixoid associated with the more abstract meaning of "completion of an action". The affixoid -ZHAO developed into the suffix -ZHE in the Tang and Five Dynasties period (618-960 AD) through neoanalysis based on the implicature that [Vdurative-ZHAOaffixoid] frequently implies an atelic situation resulting from a change of state or an atelic situation after the initial point of a certain state/activity (e.g., 把着 ba-ZHAO 'to grasp' implies an atelic situation of 'holding (something)' resulting from the event of 'grasping something'). The construction [NPloc V-zhe NP] is taken to be a location topic construction (LTC for short) in this study. This thesis proposes a multi-source-change account in which this construction [NPloc V-ZHE NP]is an amalgam of the existential construction [NPloc V NP] and the construction [S NPloc V-ZHE], which were extant in the Tang and Five Dynasties period (618-960 CE). The LTC gradually developed three subschemas. Based on the procedural meaning of -ZHE, this study argues that the so-called fake existential construction is not a new construction but an extension of the LTC. Based on the current study's findings regarding the basic function of -zhe, a new development path for -zhe is proposed and a maximally explanatory account of -zhe across constructions is provided