Distribution and Semantic Evolution of“Jianzhi”in Modern Chinese Literature

The word“jianzhi”(virtually) was seen firstly in Western Jin period. And in late Qing Dynasty, its homo- phone“jianzhi” appeared. Moreover, it evolved from an adjective to an adverb. Through study of its part of speech and mean- ing evolution in modern Chinese literature and of its construction, this paper has found that its adverbial usage became universal until Qing Dynasty and the same meaning and syntactic structure as the modern Chinese appeared. Before Qing Dynasty, it had been an adjective. In addition, as a modal adverb,“jianzhi” evolved from an adjective to a manner adverb, then grammatical- ized to an adverb of degree, and eventually became a modal adverb.