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Imperative Negatives in Earlier Southern Min and Their Later Development

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Imperative Negatives in Earlier Southern Min and Their Later Development Imperative Negatives in Earlier Southern Min and their Later Development Chinfa LIEN* INTRODUCTION: THE FORMATION OF IMPERATIVE NEGATIVES Plain negation cannot take a verb phrase to form imperative negatives as negation lacks the illocutionary force of imperatives and only operates on the propositional content of a sentence (Frege 1970). Thus, in the formation of imperative negatives a plain negative adverb cannot be immediately followed by a verb and must be mediated by modals.1 We will first introduce types of negative words before touching on types of imperative negatives. Then we will examine imperative negatives in earlier and modern Southern Min texts. We will further dwell on competing candidates for the source of the fusional negative mai3 殰 exclusively used in imperatives before concluding the paper. The structure of the paper is organized as follows. Between the introduction and the conclusion there are five sections: 1. types of negative words, 2. types of imperative negatives, 3. imperative negatives in Ming and Qing texts, 4. imperative negatives in modern Southern Min texts, and 5. competing candidates of the source for mai3 殰. 1. TYPES OF NEGATIVE WORDS There are four types of negative words in Southern Min: (1) m7 伓, (2) bo5 無, (3) be7 袂, and (4) ber7 未 in present-day Southern Min. M7 伓 is a negative word with an optional sense of volitionality.2 Bo5 無 is believed to be a fusional * National Tsinghua University, Taiwan. * National Tsinghua University, Taiwan. Email: [email protected] 1 It is surely no accident that the functional word do as a kind of modal elements has to appear in the formation of imperative negatives in English. Likewise, in Romance languages like Spanish a negative word cannot co-occur with the imperative form of a verb to yield imperative negatives. Rather, the verb has to take on the subjunctive mood to be fit for the formation of imperative negatives. (Zanuttini 1997) 2 The spelling of Southern Min in this paper is based on the Church Romanization codified in Douglas (1873). Some adjustments have been made. In particular, the diacritic tone marks have been superseded by numerical superscripts. The superscripts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8 stand for the tone categories: yin-ping, yin-shang, yin-qu, yin-ru, yang-ping, Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 04:53:56PM via free access 188 Chinfa Lien word comprising negation and u7 有 ‘have’ (Norman 1995, Yang 1971, Lien 2015). So is be7 袂 resulting from conflating the negative element of m7 and 解 ue7/e7 with a voiced fricative velar initial in Middle Chinese.3 Ber7 未 means ‘not yet’. Modals such as tit4 得, eng7用, sai2使, thang1通, and ho2 好 can co-occur with the preceding negatives to form imperative negatives. By contrast, kann2 敢, kheng2 肯, kam1 甘, beh4 卜, tioh8 著 and ai3 愛 in co-occurrence with the preceding negatives cannot yield a sentence with an imperative force. 2. TYPES OF IMPERATIVE NEGATIVES There are three types of negatives used in imperatives in Southern Min: (1) non-fusional types, (3) true fusional types, and (3) spurious fusional types. 2.1. Non-fusional types The negative m7 伓+ sai2使/ eng7用/ thang1通/ ai3愛 The first non-fusional type of imperative negatives is a sequence of the negative 伓 m7 followed by modals like thang1通 and ai3 愛 and verbs like sai2 使 and eng7用 bearing the function of deontic modals.4 m7-thang1伓通 + VP m7-ai3 伓愛 + VP m7-sai2伓使 + VP m7-eng7 伓用 + VP yang-qu and yang-ru respectively. Ch and ts and chh and tsh have been merged into ch and chh respectively as each pair shows allophonic alternation and does not involve phonemic contrast in modern Southern Min. (Tung 1957) Open o and closed o are represented as oo and o, as in bo5無 ‘have not’ and boo5 模 ‘model’. Vocalic nasalization is indicated by a double n. The rendition of earlier Southern Min sounds is based on the modern pronunciation as a way to approximate the original sound values of earlier Southern Min. Diacritics as tone categories in religious texts (see 4.2.) have been converted into numerical superscripts. 3 *Ɣ is the reconstructed Middle Chinese (MC) sound value of the 匣 initial of the modal解. There are three reflexes of this initial in modern Southern Min: (1) the zero form, as in紅, 胡, 活, 黃, 下, 湖, 盒, 解, 鞋, 旱, 學, 餡 and 何, (2) h-, as in 會, 魂, 系, 戶, 現, 杏, 幸, 蟹, 惠, 賢, 巷 and 項, and (3) k-, as in厚, 喉, 寒, 懸 and 汗. The modal 解 belongs to the first category. There is a pair of morphologically related words 解1/解2 with the alternation of voiced and voiceless initial (*Ɣ vs *k). Both forms bear MC tone II. It shows a morphological relation of plain verb and causative verb. (Chou 1972: 86) That is, the causativity is synthetically expressed by the voicing of the onset of a syllable (v.i., *Ɣ for plain verb vs *k for its causative counterpart), presumably a relic of once productive morphological process in Proto-Chinese. The modern reflex of the plain verb is 解 oe7, whereas the modern reflex of its causative counterpart is koe2. See Lien (1999) for more discussions on the cases of voicing distinction as a synthetic way of showing the plain and causative relationship and Yang (2001) for shedding light on the grammaticalization of 解。. 4 Here I will temporarily include m7-ai3 伓愛 as one of the candidates for negative modals. Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 04:53:56PM via free access Imperative negatives in Early Southern Min 189 The negative be7袂 + sai2使/ eng7用 + tit4 得 The second non-fusional type comprises the verb sai2使 or eng7用 sandwiched in between the circumfix be7---tit4 袂 --- (得) where 得 is optional. Be7 袂 is a fusional modal comprising m7 伓 and e7 解, the latter featuring a voiced fricative velar initial 匣 *Ɣ. be7-sai2-tit4 袂使(得) + VP be7-eng7-tit4 袂用(得) + VP This type also dubbed preverbal compound modals featuring deontic use did not appear until modern times (Lien 2011). 2.2. True fusional types The true fusional types are words which can factorize as a sequence of a common negative element m7伓 and ai3 愛, sai2 使, thang1 通 and ho2 好, as shown below: Fusional words Negative elements modals a mai3 嘪/殰 < m7 伓 ai3 愛 a’ mai3 嘪/殰 < m7 伓 sai2 使 b bang3 莽/邙 < m7 伓 thang1 通 c mo2 孬 < m7 伓 ho2 好 All of the fusional negative words listed above are used exclusively in imperatives and carry the illocutionary force of prohibition. Both (a) m7伓 + ai3 愛 and (a’) m7 伓 + sai2 使 could be the source for the fusional negative word mai3 嘪/殰. Bang3 莽/邙 is given as being a unique form in the Zhangzhou dialect. (Zhou 2006: 449). The same form is also found in Chen (2007: 64), a dictionary of the Zhangzhou dialect. Mo2 孬 is given in Beijing daxue zhongwenxi yuyanxue jiaoyanshi (1995: 608) as a fusional word in the Chaozhou dialect. We will leave the issue concerning the validity of both bang3 莽/邙 and mo2 孬 as cases of fusional words for future research since the data are hard to come by. 2.3. Spurious fusional types In addition to non-fusional and true fusional types of imperative negatives there is still another type, viz., the spurious ones where the source of fusional elements is not recoverable, even though they still involve the semantics of negation and modality. They are exemplified by boh4莫 and bien2免. 莫 is used as a negative adverb or a negative pronoun and may arguably be a lexicalized functional word consisting of a negative element and the indefinite pronoun 或 in one of its uses in Old Chinese. (cf. nobody as a fusion of not + anybody in English) (Mulder 1959) The use of 莫 as a marker of the prohibitive mood did not come about until the Middle Chinese (MC) period or even earlier. (Wang 2004: 381-382, Ōta 1988: 76, Ōta 1991: 53) It is noteworthy that 勿 and 莫 were Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 04:53:56PM via free access 190 Chinfa Lien often confused in the MC texts. Bien2 免 with the original meaning ‘be exempt from’ does not necessarily occur in imperatives, as shown below. (1) 老伙仔人免車票 Lau7-her2-a2 lang5 mien2 chhia1-phio3 Old person be.exempt.from car ticket ‘Old people will not be charged with bus fare.’ It can be grammaticalized as a suppletive negative counterpart of the deontic modal 著 tioh8 ‘must, should’, even though it occurs in the embedded clause. (2) 著行囉免得與人等 Tioh8 kiann5 loo0 bien2 tit4 hoo7 lang5 tan2 Should go particle avoid should let people wait ‘We must depart now lest they should wait for us.’ Its modal use can be extended to imperative negatives: (3) 免細膩 Bien2 soe3-ji7 Don’t polite ‘Please don’t stand on ceremony.’ Nevertheless, it is not a fusional word, since it cannot be factorized as a sequence of a negative element + a modal, even though it carries a logical sense of ‘not necessary, no need’. 3. IMPERATIVE NEGATIVES IN EARLIER SOUTHERN MIN TEXTS There will be two types of earlier Southern Min texts to be examined for imperative negatives: playscripts (3.1) and religious texts (3.2). 3.1. Imperative negatives in playscripts There are two sets of playscripts to be looked into: (1) four versions of the Legend of the Litchi Mirror alternatively dubbed 荔鏡記/荔枝記, and (2) other types of playscripts.
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