The development of the Chinese multifunctional construction V+<i>qilai</i>

Abstract This paper examines the multiple functions of the construction V+qilai as a discourse marker (DM) in Modern Chinese, as well as its historical development. I argue that V+qilai serves various functions in Modern Chinese, including as an elaborative, contrastive, inferential, and topic shift marker. While some research has explored the evolution of the chunked V+qilai , none have approached it from a diachronic constructional perspective or provided a convincing developmental trajectory of the DM. Drawing on extensive classical data, I maintain that the DM V+qilai originated from a directional verbal phrase used as a complement-taking predicate, evolved into a circumstantial adverbial, then into a conjunct, and finally into a DM. This trajectory aligns partially with the Trajectory Hypothesis proposed by Traugott (2022) for the evolution of DMs in English. This study contributes to cross-linguistic typological research on the emergence of pragmatic and discourse devices and how text coherence develops in human languages.