Open Access

Mutually Dependent Markers in Clause Pairs

  
Sep 14, 2024

Cite
Download Cover

This paper investigates the morphosyntactic properties of the mutually dependent markers in three representative constructions in Mandarin: the disjunctive yaome… yaome ‘or…or’ construction, the metalinguistic comparative yuqiburu ‘than… rather’ construction, and the simultaneous temporal yibianyibian ‘when…when’ construction. It argues that the two mutually dependent markers in each of these constructions originate from the morphological split of a functional element that unifies coordinate and modification constructions.