Хятад хэлний 了 (le) сул үгийн гарал үүслийн тухайд

On the origin of the mandarin chinese sentential particle了(le)

Abstract

There has been much controversy over whether the Mandarin Chinese sentential particle le has the same origin as the perfective verb suffix –le. This paper argues that the verb liao, meaning ‘to finish’ is the origin of both le and –le. Taking the position that the essence of the particle le is inchoativity, it traces the path of its grammaticalization in texts through history. The inchoative use of liao is found in texts from the 10^th century (late Tang) on, and it had developed functions similar to its modern use as a particle by the 13^th century (late Song). As evidenced in Chunggan Nŏgoltae (重刊老乞大) (1975), when both le and –le had been fully developed in the 18^th century (Qing), their pronunciation was still [liau], the same as the lexical verb liao (Kim 1998) from which they originated. On the other hand, lai ‘to come’, which Chao (1968) has suggested as the origin of le, has a similar function to modern laizhe, in marking recent past and signaling the discontinuation of the situation at the reference time. The use of lai as a past experience marker still exists in some Northern dialects in Shanxi and Shaanxi, yet in these dialects the cognate of the Mandarin Chinese particle le is clearly related to the cognate of the suffix –le, but not to lai. It is possible that the reason for the disappearance of lai from records dating from about the 18^th century (Zhang 1986) was the rise of laizhe in the same period, which Ōta (2003) observed, rather than le replacing lai as suggested by Sun (1996).