From ‘Put’ to Object Marker: A Newly Found Lexical Source in Panshi Northeastern Mandarin 1

Abstract This paper is devoted to a rarely reported function of the verb ge 搁 ‘put’ as an object marker in the Panshi dialect of Northeastern Mandarin spoken in Jilin Province, China. As in many other dialects of Northeastern Mandarin, the morpheme ge is a multifunctional word in Panshi. It can be realised as kɤ 44 and kɤ 213 . While kɤ 44 denotes ‘put’, instrumental ‘with’, conditional ‘as for’ and ‘if’, kɤ 213 is used to denote ‘be at’, ‘at’, ‘from’, ‘according to’, and an object marker. The current paper sets out to reconstruct the grammaticalisation pathway Panshi ge has taken from ‘put’ to an object marker. We propose here that the object marking function of ge in Panshi is derived from its locative use ‘at’. Our findings suggest a new lexical source and a new possible pathway of grammaticalisation for Sinitic object markers.