The development of VdeO clefts in Chinese: A diachronic constructionist approach.

• V de O clefts can be classified into specificational V de O clefts and predicational V de O clefts. • The development of specificational V de O clefts involves constructionalization. • The development of predicational V de O clefts involves constructional change. • The focus change of predicational V de O clefts is governed by the Focus-Shift Principle. Previous studies of Chinese V de O clefts mainly focus on the function of shì and attribute the meaning of the V de O clefts to the focus marking feature of shì without considering their functions and developments as independent constructions. This paper classifies V de O clefts into specificational V de O clefts (Variant 1) and predicational V de O clefts (Variant 2) and analyzes the formation and development of these two types of Chinese V de O clefts with a diachronic constructionist approach. The constructionalization of specificational V de O clefts undergoes a series of function shifts from membership-inclusion to properties-predicating and then to value-specifying. It is the micro-step changes that finally lead to the mismatched pseudo-modifer V de O element. The context-absorption of contrastive context is the source for the construction meaning specifying an exclusive value for the variable. In contrast, the development of predicational V de O clefts only involves constructional changes from V-focus to V de O-focus and then to O-focus. The change of focus is governed by the Focus-Shift Principle, according to which, the focus of a sentence tends to fall on the more complicated and specified information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]