On The Chinese Reversible Construction Based On The CDF Model

In Chinese,the meaning of the sentence remains almost the same after interchanging the place of nouns or noun phrases before and after the verbs,which is referred to as“reversible sentence”by the predecessors.Logic symbols are used to express the reversible construction more accurately,that is“?xRy?^-1”(“x”and“y”,respectively expresses nouns or noun phrases before and after the verbs,“R”refers to the rule that is influenced both by the verb and the inclusive construction,and“^-1”means the reverse sequence of“x”and“y”).According to the traditional grammar,the component before the verb in the“subject-verb-object”?shorten as“SVO”in the later?sentence can only be the agent,or the orientation noun but not the patient,unless it is a passive sentence.In fact,the meaning of the sentence after interchanging the place of nouns or noun phrases before and after the verbs remains almost the same as before,and the whole meaning of the statement is not the simple addition of the individual components in many“SVO”sentences,whose overall meaning is inclusive meaning.So how does the“inclusive”meaning come into being?How to explain this abnormal phenomenon?Many achievements have been made by scholars at home and abroad on this construction's analysis,mainly on the study of verb and the description of the structure in syntactic,semantic and pragmatic aspects.Although there are already some analysis of the semantic extension on this structure has been made with the background of cognitive linguistics and construction grammar,a convincing theoretical framework and support of data are still lacking.In terms of cognitive linguistics and cognitive construction,the“?xRy?^-1”construction is regarded as an independent construction.The CDF model is proposed based on the theory of the construction coercion principle,the double-dependency theory,and the figure&ground theory.Through the research on 841 data of the“?xRy?^-1”construction collected from Center for Chinese Linguistics PKU?shorten as CCL?and academic works which are classified into three types,the“?xRy?^-1”construction has been analyzed in syntactic,semantic and pragmatic perspectives under the framework of the CDF model to explain the formation mechanism of it.What we have found out are as follows:Syntactically,sentences before and after interchanging the place of nouns or noun phrases before and after the verbs are both composed of nouns or noun phrases before the verbs,the verbs and nouns or noun phrases after verbs.Semantically,there are various semantic relationships between the component“x”and the component“y”.Being a whole,the meaning of the“?xRy?^-1”construction refers to not only what“x”has done to“y”but also the relationship of“the including”and“being included”between“x”and“y”,which can be divided into three categories:The supplying meaning type,the adherence meaning type,and the causative meaning type.Pragmatically,this construction has the characteristics of pragmatic features that highlights the speaker's intention.If speaker stresses“x”,then“x”is put into the place of nouns or noun phrases before the verbs as the figure and“y”is put into the place of nouns or noun phrases after the verbs as the ground.Otherwise,if speaker stresses“y”,then“y”is put into the place of the nouns or noun phrases before the verbs as the figure and“x”is put into the place of nouns or noun phrases after the verbs as the ground.The contributions of this paper are listed as follows:The logic symbol“?xRy?^-1”is used to express the construction more accurately which is a mathematical way to study language;An integrated theoretical model for the“?xRy?^-1”construction is created in order to make an appropriate explanation for its formation mechanism.A closed corpus with 841 data is established,and a comprehensive explanation of its formation mechanism is made through the meticulous analysis of each token's characteristics to make.