TY - JOUR SN - 1012-4195 T1 - Chronological Strata in the Grammar of the Min Dialects AU - Tsu-Lin Mei & Hsiu-fang Yang Y1 - 1995/03/01 PY - 1995 DA - 1995/03/01 T2 - Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica JF - Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica JO - Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica JA - Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica VL - 66 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 21 Y2 - 1995/03/01 N2 - This paper shows that the grammatical component of the Min dialects is comprised of three strata which can in a general way be associated with specific historical periods and events: first, the Ch'in-Han imperial expansion which brought Old Chinese to Fukien; second, the migration from the Wu-Yueh region during the Southern dynasties; and third, a similar population movement from the North to Fukien towards the end of the T'ang dynasty.  Examples are mostly drawn from Southern Min. Grammatical constituents which came from the Late T'ang are: (1) the sentence-final inchoative particle .a 也, (2) the use of liau-3 .a 了也 at the end of a sentence to mark the completion of an action, (3) the use of liau-3 to indicate the occurrence of an event before another in constructions such as [VO liau-3 VP2] and [OV liau-3, VP2], and (4) the suffix tshiu-3 in liau-2 bue-3 tshiu-3 連尾手 'thereafter, subsequently'. Grammatical particles which entered the Min dialects during the Southern dynasties are: (5) the locative particle ti-6 著， (6) the deictic particle hi-3 許 'that', which is part of the fusion word hit 7 'that' ( < hi-3 + it-7 許一), and the interrogative particle ti-6 底. The determinative particle, Amoy e-2, Fuchou ki-2, is etymologically 其 and came from Old Chinese. From the non-Chinese substratum came the semantic distinction between inclusive "we" and exclusive "we" in the Min dialects; the donor language may be Austroasiatic, Austronesian, or Thai. ER -