The Issue

As a multi-function verb, 用 YONG is commonly used in Mandarin Chinese. In Sinica Corpus¹, there exist various usages of YONG. YONG is prototypically used as a verb or a co-verb with the meaning ‘to use’. Based on this prototypical sense, it can be semantically extended to the use as a verb meaning ‘to dine/eat/drink’, or as a modal verb meaning ‘need/have to’. Examples are given in the following table:

1 Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Modern Chinese (Sinica Corpus) is developed by the CKIP group in Academia Sinica, Taiwan. It contains a total of 5 million words collected from 1981 to 1997. Among these 5

Syntax Meaning Example

verb ‘to use’

(1) a. 我們老師在用我們的錢

women laoshi zai yong women de qian we teacher PRG YONG we RP money

‘Our teacher is using our money.’

b. 我可以用偷的、用搶的，

wo keyi yong toude, yong qiangde I can YONG steal-RP YONG rob-RP

‘I can use (the means of) stealing or robbing.’

co-verb ‘to use’

(2) a. 他用哈薩克話罵你，

ta yong hasakehua ma ni he YONG Kazakh scold you

‘He uses Kazakh to scold you.’

b. 領導者要仔細傾聽，用溝通傳達意見。

lingdaozhe yao zixi qingting, yong goutong chuanda yijian leader should carefully listen YONG communicate convey opinion

that still YONG you explain QM

‘(Does it) need you to explain it?’

verb ‘ to dine, to eat/drink’

(4) 我們兩點多在雙龍鎮用了午餐，

women liangdian duo zai shuanglongzheng yongle wucan we two-o‘clock more at Shuanglong-Town YONG-PF lunch

‘We had/ate lunch at Shuanglong Town around two o’clock.’

Tab. 1 Functions of YONG in Sinica Corpus

event coded by the main verb. This usage of YONG, with its preposition-like function in the [S + YONG + NP1 + V (+ NP2)] construction, is thus considered as a “co-verb” by Chao (1968), Yip and Don (2004), and Kwan (2011)². In (3), YONG is used as a modal auxiliary meaning ‘need/have to’. It takes an object NP (你 ni ‘you’) as its complement. In (4), YONG functions as a verb meaning ‘to dine/eat/drink’. It takes an object NP (e.g. 午餐 wucan ‘lunch’ in (4)) of the sense ‘meal/food/drink’ as its complement.

Recently, unlike those functions listed above, a special use of YONG has emerged in Taiwan Mandarin. Examples are provided in the following:

(5) a. 我實在很懶得洗碗，就叫我老公去用。 [Google, 2012/8/11]

wo shizai hen lan de xi wan, jiu jiao wo laogong qu yong

I really very lazy DE wash dish, CEM Caus. I husband Purp. YONG

‘I was too lazy to wash dishes. I asked my husband to do it.’

b. A:你可以幫我洗碗嗎？

A: ni keyi bang wo xi wan ma A: you can help I wash dish QM

‘Can you wash the dishes for me?’

B:好，我來用。

B: hao, wo lai yong B: okay, I Purp. YONG

‘OK, I’ll do it/wash the dishes.

As in (5), the verb YONG can be used to substitute the previously-mentioned verb phrase xi wan ‘wash dishes’, functioning as a pro-form of this VP. Moreover, in some other cases, YONG can even be used independently without any “replaced verb” mentioned in the context, as in the following:

2 Li and Thompson (1974) suggested that verbs and co-verbs are two distinct categories and co-verbs are essentially prepositions. Rather than being viewed as a co-verb sentence, a sentence like (2) is considered as a serial verb construction by Li and Thompson (1974). YONG in (2) is thus regarded as an ordinary verb, not a co-verb, since it functions as the first verb in a serial verb construction rather than as a preposition taking a NP.

However, as Kwan (2011) had noted that Chinese co-verbs do not form a homogeneous category and some co-verbs are more verbal (e.g. 在 zai, 幫 bang, 用 yong) while others are more prepositional (e.g. 從 cong, 沿 yan, 替 ti). That is, Chinese co-verbs have their intermediate categorical status between verbs and prepositions. Taking its dual categorical status into consideration, the usage of YONG in (2) therefore will be

(6) a. 喂我肚子餓了，幫我用早餐 [Google, 2012/10/2]

wei wo duzi ele bang wo yong zaocan

hey I stomach hungry-PF help I YONG breakfast

‘Hey! I am hungry. Prepare/cook breakfast for me!’

b. 最近很忙…一回家就要忙著用報告 [Google, 2012/12/24]

zuijin hen mang … yi hui jia jiu yao mangzhe yong baogao

recently very busy…once come-back home CEM should busy-SI YONG paper

‘I am very busy recently. Once I reached home, I have to continue to write my paper busily.’

c. 醫生一直用針去用我的韌帶， [Yam Blog, 2012/11/17]

yisheng yizhi yong zhen qu yong wo de rendai

doctor always use needle Purp. YONG I RP ligament

‘The doctor keeps using the needle to probe my ligament’

In (6), there is no any “replaced verb” in the context for YONG to refer to. YONG here does not indicate the actual specific event undertaken. The reading ‘prepare/cook’ in (6a),

‘writing’ in (6b) and ‘probe’ in (6c) of YONG can only be obtained via pragmatic inference or other contextual information. Noteworthily, in (6c), the second YONG is distinct from the first YONG. The first YONG is a co-verb meaning ‘to use’ and takes an Instrument NP 針 zhen ‘needle’ as its object while the second YONG is the novel use of YONG which depicts the doctor’s action of probing the speaker’s ligament.

Compared with the existing uses of YONG, as listed in Tab. 1, it can be figured out that this special emerging use of YONG may be similar to or different from the existing uses in terms of their shared or distinct syntactic and semantic properties. Take the Instrument/Means verb and co-verb YONG for example, they are syntactically similar to the emerging use of YONG since they all can be used in VO structure, as shown in (1), (2) and (6). However, they are semantically different in that Instrument/Means verb and co-verb YONG are used with its prototypical meaning ‘to use’ while the meaning of the emerging

use of YONG is underspecified. As to the modal auxiliary YONG, it is syntactically similar to the emerging use of YONG in the sense that they both serve for somewhat more grammatical, auxiliary-like function. Namely, the emerging YONG can be used for anaphoric function, as in (5), while the modal YONG is essentially an auxiliary.

Nevertheless, they differ in their respective meanings. The modal YONG has the meaning

‘need/have to’, and the emergin YONG has an unspecified, contextually dependent meaning.

Furthermore, they may also share same surface form but with their different semantics respectively. Consider the following potential ambiguous interpretation of the pattern 不用 了 buyongle:

(7) A:你今天要剪頭髮嗎？

A: ni jintian yao jian toufa ma A: you today want cut hair QM

‘Do you want to have your hair cut today?’

B:不用了。

B: buyongle B: not YONG-PF

a. ‘I do not want to do it/have my hair cut’

b. ‘I do not need/have to have my hair cut.’

In (7), the pattern 不用了 buyongle may have two different interpretation (a) and (b). In (7a), YONG is interpreted as ‘do it’, or more precisely, ‘have my hair cut’. In other words, it is similar to the function of the emerging YONG in (5) since it substitutes and refers back to the forementioned VP 剪頭髮 jian toufa ‘have one’s hair cut’. In (7b), YONG functions as a modal auxiliary meaning ‘need/have to’. Since both the two readings (a) and (b) are possible for the same pattern 不用了 buyongle, the ambiguity thus arises. Finally, the emerging YONG is similar to the dining YONG in that they both share the pattern 用餐 yong can, as shown in (4) and (6). However, they are semantically different in their respective meanings. In (4), YONG has the meaning ‘to dine/eat/drink’ while in (6), it has the contextual interpretation ‘to cook’. The only similarity in their semantics is that they do not have the prototypical sense of YONG, namely, the meaning ‘to use’.

From the observation above, it can be figured out that though these existing usages of YONG may share some syntactic or semantic similarities with the emerging use of YONG, they do not perfectly match in all respects with the emerging YONG. In other words, this emerging use of YONG, as shown in (5-6), is a wholly novel use of YONG due to the fact that it is not completely identical to the existing functions of YONG in all respects of its form and meaning. Furthermore, this novel usage of YONG has not been discussed in literatures. It is also not found in earlier-built corpora such as Sinica Corpus. Nevertheless, it is commonly used in Taiwan Mandarin nowadays, mostly in colloquial registers. It can be widely found in daily conversations and informal writings such as internet forums and personal blogs. Then, a number of questions arise: what is unique about this special usage of YONG? What are its grammatical function and lexical semantics? Why and how does this YONG come into being in Taiwan Mandarin? Is this novel usage a result of grammatical change? If it is, what kind of change it may be?