THE CHINESE COPULA SHI AND ITS ORIGIN: A COGNITIVE-BASED APPROACH
Jung-hsing Chang
This paper discusses the proposals of Li and Thompson (1977), Yen (1986), and Feng (1993) in relation to the development of the Chinese copula and argues that Li and Thompson’s suggestion of a topic mechanism, Yen’s analogical change, and Feng’s phonological pause are unsatisfactory in explaining the development of the copula. It is suggested that Katz’s (1996) cognitive concept of existence in time and space between pronouns and copulas is what relates the demonstrative pronoun 'shi' to a copula, while the verbal form 'shi' occurring in the same syntactic context as the demonstrative pronoun 'shi' is what triggers this demonstrative pronoun to turn into a copula.
