A typological investigation of disposal markers in Wu dialect (in Chinese)

From the typological perspective, origins of disposal markers in Wu dialect fall into two categories. The first type grammaticalized from verbs indicating "to take or to hold" while the second one grammaticalized from verbs meaning "to give", comitative prepositions and verbs showing "to help" through the intermediate stage of beneficiary prepositions. The first type is mainly distributed in the northern Wu dialect district and the second one is mainly distributed in the southern Wu dialect district. Typological differences on disposal markers in the northern and southern districts of Wu dialects are associated with the typological characteristics of SVO and the tendency of SOV. The double object structure "verbs meaning gei 'to give' + IO + DO" is the necessary condition on which verbs meaning gei "to give" grammaticalized into disposal markers. Disposal markers of the second type appeared later than disposal markers of the first one. The influence of mandarin, especially the strong position of Putonghua caused disposal category to extend regions and promoted the generation and formation of disposal markers of the second type.