The semantic continuum from disposition to causative meaning

Abstract This paper contributes to the study of actualization through a case study on the development of the Chinese NP 1 + bǎ +NP 2 +VP construction. Actualization is the process following syntactic reanalysis in which new linguistic structures diffuse and extend their usage. Data are sourced from The Centre for Chinese Linguistics (CCL) Corpus. Multiple Correspondence Analysis is employed to explore the dynamic relationships among several subconstructions, and Multidimensional Scaling is adopted to visualize the continuity of their meanings. The findings indicate that: (1) the subconstructions form a continuum from expressing disposition meanings to causative meanings; (2) over time, the manipulation of NP 1 to NP 2 decreases, while the affectedness of NP 2 increases; (3) evidence of actualization is observed in the expansion of both semantic and syntactic distributional contexts. These results challenge prevalent claims regarding the high affectedness of the argument marked by bǎ and present further evidence for the ongoing debate over directionality in language change. These findings lend support to the gradualness ( Traugott & Trousdale 2010 ) and diffusion hypotheses ( De Smet 2016 ) of language change, and supplement these hypotheses by proposing that the actualization process can be influenced by the token frequency of existing patterns.