Verso un articolo indefinito in cinese moderno: linee di grammaticalizzazione del numerale 一yī

The use of the numeral classifier construction yī ‘one’ + Classifier as a marker of indefiniteness has already been acknowledged by several studies in Chinese linguistics, suggesting the emergence of an indefinite article in Modern Chinese. This contribution explores the syntactic and pragmatic uses of the numeral construction and its reduced form, with the aim of demonstrating that the original quantifier has actually completed the grammaticalization process into an indefinite article. The recent emergence of a new phonologically reduced form in the spoken language of Beijing and two special pragmatic uses of the general classifier gè provide further evidence of this development, which is not isolated, but part of a general evolution of the grammatical category of (in)definiteness in Modern Chinese.