Xiang serves as an incipient proximative marker in the Xuzhou dialect. Compared with fully grammaticalized proximative markers, it exhibits a wider range of syntactic and semantic properties characteristic of the early stages of grammaticalization. Drawing on the synchronic syntactic differences of xiang across its diverse semantic functions, a more comprehensive grammaticalization pathway from desiderative verbs to proximative markers can be constructed, enabling a deeper exploration of the evolutionary mechanism underlying this grammaticalization. Previous studies on proximative markers have rarely addressed the following syntactic features of xiang: (1) When the subject is a human and xiang is followed by a dynamic non-volitional situation, a distinction arises between subject-oriented and speaker-oriented readings, with the former encoding the subject’s perception; (2) When the subject is a human and xiang is followed by a dynamic volitional situation, xiang can convey the proximative reading only in highly constrained contexts, and in most cases retains its core desiderative meaning. According to feature (1), it is clear that the grammaticalization of desiderative verbs commences with the functional expansion of xiang to subsequent verbs. Taken together, features (1) and (2) demonstrate that the polysemous stage - where desiderative and proximative readings co-occur - emerges after the proximative has developed, rather than immediately following the desiderative verb stage.
Key words
Xuzhou dialect /
xiang /
proximative marker /
grammaticalization /
syntactic features
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