A Study On Contextual Semantics Of "If" Complex Sentences In Chinese

Situation Semantics is the study of the meaning problem of natural languages. Inprevious studies, the discussions on Situation Semantics were mostly at the theoreticallevel; only a few studies were at the practical level. Because previous studies ofSituation Semantics have ignored the fact that cognitive and pragmatic factors couldeffect the meaning of natural language, this paper aims to construct a new semanticexplanation model on Situation Semantics. This paper also aims to achieve a balancedstate between the subjective and objective elements in the process of explaining naturallanguage meaning. First, on the basis of Barwise and Perry’s theory, the paper builds aThree-Dimensional Meaning Explanation Frame, namely,“situation constraint-conceptual blending-specific context” theory, and a “situation-cognition-pragmatics”-dimensional semantic model. Then, the paper analyzes the meaning of Chinese“if-complex” constructions to illustrate the universality of the3D-ME Frame. SituationSemantics, which provides a reasonable model for understanding Chinese“if-complex” constructions, is studied from a cognitive-pragmatic perspective in thispaper and applied from theory to practice.