A Study On The Semantic Structure And Construction Of Chinese Honorifics

Honorifics are words that express or imply respects.As an important part of Chinese Vocabulary System,they are adopted by people to convey politeness,respect or honors to others.Previous studies on honorifics are mainly investigated from the perspectives of interlanguage comparative researches,pragmatics,sociolinguistics,lexicology and external-oriented pedagogical practice,whereas these investigations on the semantic structures and the construction of Chinese honorifics have not made much progress.This thesis adopts Construction Grammar,Appraisal Theory and Aristotle’s Ten Category Classification to analyze and shed light on the semantic structures and meaning construction mechanism of Chinese honorifics.The corpus of Chinese honorifics is built up by exhausting the words in the Modern Chinese Dictionary(6th Edition)?which satisfy the criterion on the morpheme or the criterion on the semantic features.Based on quantitative and qualitative analysis,the research findings of this thesis are listed as follows:1)An honorific consists of both evaluative meaning and descriptive meaning.According to Appraisal Theory,the evaluative meanings of the collected data include ten types,such as the types of happiness and propriety.Among them,the evaluative meanings of honorifics involving Propriety account for the largest portion,followed by the evaluative meanings in Capacity.Besides,according to Aristotle’s Ten Category Classifications,the descriptive meanings of honorifics include eight types,such as the types of Life entity and Action,among which those in Life entity account for the largest portion.In addition,some collocation rules between the descriptive meaning and evaluative meaning of honorifics are uncovered.For example,honorifics with the descriptive meaning in Life entity and the evaluative meaning in Propriety(its abbreviated form can be represented as honorifics in Life entity-Propriety)possess the largest number,followed by honorifics in Action-Propriety pattern.2)In the light of the autonomous structure and dependent structure proposed by Langacker,collected data are classified into two categories,including honorifics in Autonomy-Dependence Alignment and honorifics in Dependence-Dependence Alignment.Honorifics in Autonomy-Dependence Alignment include nine types,such ashonorifics in Life entity-Normality pattern and honorifics in Inanimate entity-Valuation pattern.While honorifics in Dependence-Dependence Alignment include eleven types,such as honorifics in Action-happiness pattern.Seen from the perspective of their dynamic semantic construction,honorifics in Autonomous-Dependent Alignment are most constructed via Blending Model(84.5%),followed by Metaphorical or Metonymic Coercion-Blending Model(15.5%).In Blending Model,the descriptive meaning of the honorific,acting as the autonomous structure,makes concrete descriptions on the E-site(the abbrevation of Elaboration Site)which is dependent and provided by the evaluative meaning of this honorific.Following this description,the meaning of the honorific can be directly identified.While in Metaphorical or Metonymic Coercion-Blending Model,the composite meaning of an honorific can not be inferred directly from its descriptive meaning and evaluative meaning.In this model,the descriptive meaning is coerced into a new meaning due to the semantic incompatibility between the evaluative meaning and the original descriptive meaning of the honorifics.Following the Metaphorical or Metonymic coercion,the meaning of the honorifics can be identified.In addition,honorifics in Dependent-Dependent Alignment are all constructed via Structural Coercion-Blending Model.In this model,the descriptive meaning of an honorific,as one of the dependent structures,is coerced into an autonomous structure by considering its relevant encyclopedic knowledge.Following the process of structural coercion,the descriptive meaning of an honorific can make concrete descriptions on the E-site provided by the evaluative meaning of this honorific,and therefore,the meaning of the honorific can be identified.This thesis has the significance in three aspects.First of all,this thesis collects the honorifics which are still in circulation.Careful selections of the honorifics guarantee the timeliness of the research results.Secondly,this thesis explores the structures of honorifics from the perspectives of descriptive meaning and evaluative meaning.The classification can be applied in machine translation field to help improve the accuracy of honorifics translation.Finally,this thesis studies the semantic construction of honorifics.The research results can be adopted in pedagogical practice to help language learners deepen their understanding of honorifics and improve their ability to master the honorifics.