A comparative study of 时 <i>si</i> ^<i>2</i> <i>/shi</i> ^<i>2</i> in Meixian Hakka and Ancient Chinese using the Minimalist Program

Abstract Although Meixian Hakka is a modern spoken dialect and Ancient Chinese only appears today as written text, aspects of Ancient Chinese have been preserved in modern Hakka. An example of this is 时 si 2 /shi 2 , for which few studies have examined the grammar. Moreover, to date, no studies have compared this word’s usage in Meixian Hakka with that of Ancient Chinese. Employing a Minimalist Program framework, this comparative study explores the uses and related structures of si 2 /shi 2 in Meixian Hakka and Ancient Chinese. Using data collected from texts and conversations, it reveals that si 2 /shi 2 can be a morpheme or a sentence component and can function as a topic marker. In these roles, si 2 /shi 2 has the same structure in both varieties, “topic si 2 /shi 2 rheme,” and its basic syntactic construction is [ TopP NP [ Top′ si 2 /shi 2 ] FocP]. Although most meanings of si 2 /shi 2 differ between Meixian Hakka and Ancient Chinese, in both cases the subjects are topics or parts of topics. Provided that the verbs agree with their subjects in person, number, and case, the specifiers in TopP can be either definite or indefinite. Finally, this study demonstrates the flexibility of a Minimalist Program framework, along with some challenges for the framework itself.