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On Time Word “Zan gan-er” (趱赶儿) in Qingdao Dialect



Author(s)

WANG Yan-jun

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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2018.12.019

Jinan University, Guangzhou, China

In Qingdao dialect, “zan gan-er” (趱赶儿), meaning “small amount of time”, always collocates with “duo (多), yi (一), bu (不), mei (没)” etc., to form many types of quantifiers which hold the similar meaning “brief period” different in degree and which act as attributes, adverbial modifiers or objects. Due to the existence of a syntactic limitation of the “one core-verb”, in the serial-verb construction, the word “zan gan” (趱赶) gradually became an adverb, meaning “in a hurry”, and then under the analogy or derivation of the reasoning mechanism, the hidden meaning of its “temporary time” gradually became clear in daily life, and finally the word “zan gan-er” (趱赶儿) was evolved into a time word which meaning was “small amount of time”.

Qingdao dialect, time word, zan gan-er, grammaticalization