DIACHRONIC VARIATION IN WH QUESTIONS

This lemma introduces the basic structural characteristics of wh-questions in Late Archaic

Chinese (approximately 5th-3rd centuries B.C.E) and the principle changes in Middle

Chinese which led to the emergence of modern Chinese wh-questions. The lemma also

briefly summarizes the emergence of the most common wh-words in use in modern

Mandarin.

1. Late Archaic Chinese

Wáng (1958) divides Late Archaic Chinese wh-words into three classes, depending on the

initial consonant in the reconstructed forms.

(1) a. 誰 shéi [*ʑɪ̆ wəi] ‘who’, 孰 shú [*ʑɪ̆ wəuk] ‘which’

b. 何 hé [*ɣa] ‘what’, 奚 xī [*ɣɪ̆ e] ‘what’, 曷 hé [*ɣat] ‘when’, 胡 hú [*ɣɑ] ‘why’

c. 恶 wū [*ɑ] ‘where’, 安 ān [*an] ‘where’, 焉 yān [*ɪ̆ an] ‘where’

The [ʑ-] series in (1a) refers mainly to persons, though 孰 shú ‘which’ can also refer to

things. The main distinguishing characteristic of 孰 shú ‘which’ is that it presupposes a

known set of individuals among whom a choice is requested. 誰 shéi can function as

subject, object, or predicate, while 孰 shú typically occurs in subject position.

(2) a. 誰將當日食？ (Zuǒzhuàn, Zhāo Gōng 左傳/昭公 7)

Shéi jiāng dāng rìshí?

who will face eclipse

‘Who will face the consequences of the eclipse?’

b. 父與夫孰親？ (Zuǒzhuàn, Huán Gōng 左傳/桓公 15)

Fù yǔ fū shú qīn?

father and husband which dear

‘Which is dearer, one’s father or her husband?’

The [ɣ-] series includes 何 hé and 奚 xī, which were generally used as nominal wh-words

meaning ‘what’. In matrix questions, wh-expressions were generally required to be in

preverbal position. Subject wh-phrases appeared in-situ before the verb, as in (2). Object

wh-phrases moved to a position preceding the verb but below the position for the subject, as

shown in (3). The positional difference is clear from the relative positions of subject and

object wh-words with respect to the modal jiāng ‘will’. Subjects precede the modal, as in

(2a), while objects follow it, as can be seen in (3a).

(3) a. 我將何求？ (Zuǒzhuàn, Xī 左傳/僖公 28)

Wǒ jiāng hé qiú?

1 will what ask.for

‘What will I ask for?’

 b. 丈人奚憂？ (Hánfēizǐ, Shuōlín 2 韓非子/說林下)

Zhàngrén xī yōu?

elder what worry.about

‘What are you worried about, old man?’

The [ɣ-] series also includes the adverbials 曷 hé ‘when’ (4a), 胡 hú ‘why’ (4b). 何 hé

could also be used for ‘why’, as in (4c).

(4) a. 吾子其曷歸？ (Zuǒzhuàn, Zhāo Gōng 左傳/昭公 1)

Wú zǐ qí hé guī?

my sir will when return

‘When will you return?’

b. 夫子胡不入乎？ (Zhuāngzǐ, Déchōngfú 莊子/德充符)

Fūzǐ hú bù rù hū?

master why not enter EXCL

‘Why don’t you come in, Master?’

c. 何必罪居者？ (Guóyŭ, Jìn 國語/晉語 4)

Hé bì zuì jū zhě?

what necessarily blame reside Det

‘Why must (one) blame the residents?’

誰 shéi ‘who’ and 何 hé ‘what’ also functioned as nominal predicates.

(5) a. 追我者誰也？ (Mèngzǐ, Lílóu 2 孟子/離婁下)

Zhuī wǒ zhě shéi yě?

chase us DET who COP

‘Who is the one chasing us?’

b. 君與我此，何也？ (Guóyǔ, Jìn 國語/晉語 1)

Jūn yǔ wŏ cǐ hé yě?

lord give me this what COP

‘Why is it that my lord gives me these things?’

Wáng reconstructs the series in (1c) without a consonantal onset. All of the members of this

series refer to locations or goals.

(6) a. 其子焉往？ (Mèngzǐ, Lílóu 1 孟子/離婁上)

Qí zǐ yān wǎng?

3.GEN son where go

‘Where would their sons go?’

 b. 將安可得乎？ (Mòzǐ 墨子 32)

Jīang ān kě dé hū?

will where POT obtain EXCL

‘Where could (they) be obtained?’

It is very rare for embedded interrogatives to contain wh-words. This is particularly true of

embedded questions containing a wh-word in object grammatical function.. This type of

wh-question was more generally expressed as a relative clause formed on suǒ. Employment

of a relative clause in place of a clausal constituent is probably due to the fact that

embedded clauses were typically nominalized in Late Archaic Chinese, as shown in (7b).

Genitive case on the embedded subject is evidence of the clausal nominalization.

(7) a. 有司未知所之。 (Mèngzǐ, Liáng Huì 2 孟子/梁惠王下)

Yŏusī wèi zhī suŏ zhī.

servant not know SUO go

‘I do not know [where (you) are going].’

b. 臣固知王之不忍也。 (Mèngzǐ, Liáng Huì 1 孟子/梁惠王上)

Chén gù zhī [wáng zh ī bù rén] yě.

I already know king Gen not bear COP

‘I already knew that you would not be able to bear it.’

2. Middle Chinese Changes

Early in the Hàn period (2nd century BCE-2nd century CE), movement of phrasal wh-

constituents was lost, as shown in (8a). In contrast, monosyllabic wh-words continued to

undergo fronting, as in (8b). This asymmetry was noticed by Feng (1996), who analyzes

both Old and early Middle Chinese wh-movement as prosodic cliticization.

(8) a. 此固其理也，有何怨乎？ (Shǐjì Liánpǒ 史記/廉頗藺相如列傳)

Cǐ gù qí lǐ yĕ, [VP yŏu hé yuàn ] hū?

this ADV DEM way COP have what complaint Q

‘This is the way things are; what complaint could you have?’

b. 子將何欲？ (Shǐjì, Cìkè 史記/刺客列傳)

Zǐ jiāng hé [VP yù thé ]?

you will what want

‘What will you want?’

Aldridge (2010, to appear), however, points out that there are a number of asymmetries

between Late Archaic and early Middle Chinese. Principle among these was that Late

Archaic Chinese permitted wh-fronting across a nonfinite clause boundary, as in (9a). Long

distance fronting was lost in the Hàn period. What is observed instead is movement within

the embedded clause, as in (9b). Again, this change is accounted for by positing reanalysis

of syntactic movement as cliticization. In (9b), the wh-word cliticizes to the nearest

potential host, i.e. the embedded verb.

(9) a. 公誰欲與？ (Zhuāngzǐ, Xúwúguěi 莊子/徐无鬼)

Gōng shéi yù [yǔ __ ]?

you who want give

‘Who do you want to give (it) to?’

b. 諸君欲誰立？ (Shǐjì, Zhào Shìjiā 史記/趙世家)

Zhū jūn yù [shéi lì __ ]?

all gentleman want who stand

‘Gentlemen, who do you want to place (on the throne)?’

Cliticization of monosyllabic wh-words was probably lost soon after the Hàn period,

resulting in full wh-in-situ, which is the norm in modern Chinese varieties. Wèi (2004)

provides a few early in-situ examples, as in the 3rd century C.E. text below.

(10) 時以語誰？ (Sānguózhì, Wèi, Máo Jiè 三國志/魏書十二/毛玠)

Shíyǐ yù shéi?

then tell who

‘At that time, who did (you) tell?’

In Middle Chinese, there was also an increase in embedded wh-questions, especially with

wh-words as objects. The following is an example from a 6th century text. This is

unsurprising, given that embedded clauses were no longer nominalized in Middle Chinese.
(11) 忽而不見，不知何去。 (Fó bĕnxíng jíjīng 佛本行集經 35)

Hū ér bù jiàn, bù zhī hé qù.

suddenly not see not know where go

‘(He) suddenly disappeared, and (I) do not know where (he) went.’

Changes in the inventory of wh-words are in evidence from the Hàn period. 誰 shéi

continued to be used for ‘who’ and 何 hé for ‘what’. But these increasingly occurred in

disyllabic compounds, as in (8a) above. 安 ān ‘where’ was also used in the compound 安所

ānsuǒ ‘where’ until approximately the 4th century, when it was replaced by 那 nǎ ‘where’

(Wèi 2004).

The modern Mandarin 哪里 nǎlǐ ‘where’ traces its origin to 那 nǎ, which appeared

sporadically in Late Archaic Chinese in the sense of ‘how, why’.

(12) 棄甲則那？ (Zuǒzhuàn, Xuān Gōng 左傳/宣公 2)

Qì jiǎ zé nǎ?

discard armor then how

‘(We) lost our armor; what of it?’

那 nǎ is generally believed to be a contraction of 奈何 nàihé ‘how’ in which the onset

comes from the onset of the first syllable and the rhyme from the rhyme of the second
syllable (Wáng 1990, Yú and Ueda 1999, Jiǎng and Cáo 2005). The phonological

plausibility of this claim is suggested by the fact that 那 nǎ shares its onset with 奈 nài and

its rhyme with 何 hé. Baxter (1992) reconstructs 那 nǎ as *nɑj and 何 hé as *gɑj. Guō

(1986) lists 那 nǎ and 奈 nài as sharing an initial consonant with 泥 ní, which both Guō

(1986) and Baxter (1992) reconstruct as *n-.那 nǎ acquired the modern sense of ‘where’ in

post-Hàn Middle Chinese (Wáng 1958, Ohta 1958).

The modern 什麼, 甚麼 shénme ‘what’emerged in the Tang period (Wáng 1958, Ohta

1958). The following dialog shows examples of both 什麼 shénme ‘what’ and 那裏 nǎlǐ

‘where’ in a 10th century text.

(13) a. 雪峰問少師："什摩處歸？"對曰："江西。"

Xuě Fēng wèn shào shī: “Shénme chù guī?”

Xuě Fēng ask young master what place return

Duì yuē: “Jiāngxī.”

answer say Jiāngxī

‘Xuě Fēng asked the young master, “To what place do I return?” [The young

master] answerer, “Jiāngxī”.’

b. "峰曰："江西那裏？"對曰："石霜。" (Zǔtángjí 祖堂集 6)

Fēng yuē: “Jiāngxī nǎlǐ?”

Fēng say Jiāngxī where

 Duì yuē: “Shíshuāng.”

answer say Shíshuāng

‘Fēng asked, “Where in Jiāngxī?” [The young master] replied, “Shíshuāng”.’

Various proposals have been put forth regarding the origin of 什麼, 甚麼 shénme ‘what’.

There is as yet no consensus on the etymology of the first member of the compound. But it

is fairly clear that the second member is originally wù 物 ‘thing’ (Shimura 1984, Lǚ 1985,

Wú 1996, Féng 2000, Jiǎng 2005). The reanalysis to a wh-word was facilitated by its use in

a compound with Late Archaic Chinese hé 何 ‘what’, which itself was still used as a wh-

word meaning ‘what’ in Middle Chinese. The following example dates from no later than

the 4th century.

(14) 爾作何物也？ (Sōushēnjí 搜神記 19)

Ĕr zuò héwù yě.

you do what ASP

‘What have you done?’

The reanalysis of, wù 物 ‘thing’ as a wh-word is confirmed by the fact that it was

sometimes used in isolation to mean ‘what’.物 wù also combined with the verb 作 zuò,

resulting eventually in the modern form 怎麼 zĕnme ‘how’ (Lǚ 1985, Zhāng 2003, Jiǎng

2005).
Primary Sources

Hanji Dianzi Wenxian [Electronic Corpus of Chinese Texts]

http://hanji.sinica.edu.tw/index.html?

Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

References

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Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. http://chinalinks.osu.edu/naccl/naccl-

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Aldridge, Edith, is assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of

Washington. She has published on interrogative constructions in Old and Middle Chinese

in the Journal of East Asian Linguistics and The Linguistic Review. She has also published

work in collected volumes on a variety of other topics in Old Chinese syntax, including

pronoun fronting to negation in Movement Theory of Control (Benjamins, 2010), DP

structure in Historical Syntax and Linguistic Theory (OUP, 2009), and reflexive pronouns

in the Proceedings of the 2nd Meeting of the International Conference on East Asian

Linguistics (Simon Fraser University Working Papers in Linguistics, vol. 2, 2009).

Keywords: wh-movement, wh-in-situ, wh-word, embedded wh-question, cliticization

Teaser: This lemma introduces the basic structural characteristics of wh-questions in Old

Chinese and the principle changes in Middle Chinese which led to the emergence of

modern Chinese wh-questions. The lemma also briefly summarizes the emergence of the

most common wh-words in use in modern Mandarin.