Organisation

P. Cabredo Hofherr (UMR 7023 -SFL) & Chang Liu (INALCO)

GIVE and « GET to GIVE » in Sinitic languages »

Crosslinguistic studies have clearly demonstrated that GIVE verbs are highly polyfunctional in many languages of the world, as demonstrated in several works by Newman (1996), (1998) and Malchukov et al (eds.)(2012) ; or more specifically for Southeast Asia by Lord et al (2002), and Jenny (2012). 

For Southeast Asia, at least three main pathways are typically described :
(i)    GIVE     >    dative/benefactive preposition
(ii)    GIVE     >    permissive causative verb 
(iii)    GIVE     >     purposive conjunction ‘so that’ 

In this talk, major clusters of constructions in Sinitic languages manifested by polyfunctional GIVE verbs are discussed and modelled in the form of a radial diagram to capture the currently attested semantic shifts and reanalysis which leads to new construction types and functions. In China, Central and Southern Sinitic languages, in particular, are richly endowed when it comes to the semantic field of GIVE. They attest to over a dozen sources in terms of unrelated and phonetically distinct lexemes. Curiously, this field also includes lexemes identical with GET verbs from the same language.
After outlining the main grammaticalized functions of GIVE in Sinitic, an important focus is accorded to the interaction of GIVE and GET. GET, like GIVE, shows regular patterns of polysemy across the world (Kuteva et al 2019, Enfield 2001). In certain linguistic areas within China, and in specific construction types, GET transforms into GIVE as part of its polysemy chaining. Put more succinctly, GET verbs can be the source of GIVE verbs, which subsquently feed into the same set of pathways for GIVE. We argue that the intertwining of GET and GIVE polysemy appears to be largely confined to the area of Central Sinitic languages (Chappell 2017) as one of its identifying features.