On the origin of the Chinese reflexive ziji from the perspective of the Medieval Chinese Buddhist scriptures
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Guanming Zhu
Abstract
Before the Eastern Han Dynasty (25 AD-220 AD), the Chinese reflexive zi 自 ‘self, oneself’ differed greatly from the personal pronoun ji 己 ‘one’s own, oneself’ both in distribution and function. In the Chinese Buddhist scriptures translated since the Eastern Han Dynasty, however, a new usage of zi as a possessor emerged, and zi and ji began to co-occur in a possessor position which later led to the combination of the two words into a single compound ziji no later than the Sui Dynasty (581 AD-ca. 618 AD). This paper holds that the new possessor feature of the word zi was derived from the Sanskrit word sva due to the influence of the translators’ mother tongue.
Abstract
Before the Eastern Han Dynasty (25 AD-220 AD), the Chinese reflexive zi 自 ‘self, oneself’ differed greatly from the personal pronoun ji 己 ‘one’s own, oneself’ both in distribution and function. In the Chinese Buddhist scriptures translated since the Eastern Han Dynasty, however, a new usage of zi as a possessor emerged, and zi and ji began to co-occur in a possessor position which later led to the combination of the two words into a single compound ziji no later than the Sui Dynasty (581 AD-ca. 618 AD). This paper holds that the new possessor feature of the word zi was derived from the Sanskrit word sva due to the influence of the translators’ mother tongue.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Foreword V
- Contents VII
- List of Abbreviations IX
- Theory and fact – A study of the translated Buddhist scriptures of the Medieval Period from the perspective of language contact 1
- On the origin of the Chinese reflexive ziji from the perspective of the Medieval Chinese Buddhist scriptures 15
- The origin and development of negative exclusive particles in the Chinese language 41
- The postpositions suo 所 and bian 边 in translated Chinese Buddhist scriptures of the Medieval Period 75
- Variant reduplication and four-character state adjectives in Yuan Zaju 96
- The correlation between the Chinese purpose construction “VP + qu (去, ‘go’)” and SOV languages 125
- On the Han’er Yanyu of the Yuan Dynasty 149
- A study of the special syntactic features in Yuan baihua 168
- On the special syntactic features in the vernacular imperial edicts of the early Ming Dynasty (1368–1424) 191
- The influence of language contact on word order of some minority languages in Southern China 205
- Second language acquisition and contactinduced language change in the history of the Chinese language 237
- Postscript 254
- Index 255
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Foreword V
- Contents VII
- List of Abbreviations IX
- Theory and fact – A study of the translated Buddhist scriptures of the Medieval Period from the perspective of language contact 1
- On the origin of the Chinese reflexive ziji from the perspective of the Medieval Chinese Buddhist scriptures 15
- The origin and development of negative exclusive particles in the Chinese language 41
- The postpositions suo 所 and bian 边 in translated Chinese Buddhist scriptures of the Medieval Period 75
- Variant reduplication and four-character state adjectives in Yuan Zaju 96
- The correlation between the Chinese purpose construction “VP + qu (去, ‘go’)” and SOV languages 125
- On the Han’er Yanyu of the Yuan Dynasty 149
- A study of the special syntactic features in Yuan baihua 168
- On the special syntactic features in the vernacular imperial edicts of the early Ming Dynasty (1368–1424) 191
- The influence of language contact on word order of some minority languages in Southern China 205
- Second language acquisition and contactinduced language change in the history of the Chinese language 237
- Postscript 254
- Index 255
