A Diachronic Study of ‘Inter-Changeability’ between ‘Bu’ and ‘Mei’

This study examined the characteristics of the ‘inter-changeability’ between ‘bu’ and ‘mei’ in modern Chinese from a diachronic perspective. From a diachronic perspective, the ‘inter-changeability’ of ‘bu’ and ‘mei’ is closely related to the grammaticalization of ‘mei’. Around the 15th century, during the transition of Chinese predicates from non-bound to bound forms, ‘mei’ came to replace negative particles such as ‘wei’, ‘wei-ceng’, and ‘bu-ceng’. The nouns that were the primary modifiers of ‘沒’ share an intersection with the non-action predicates (state verbs, adjectives, etc.) that were the primary modifiers of ‘bu’, along with the attribute of ‘time stability’. This ‘inter-changeability’ can be seen as a transitional phenomenon arising from the overlapping usage of the two negatives due to these characteristics.