A Study On The Expression Of Motion Event In Mandarin Chinese

Based on the theory of framing event and typology of lexicalization by Leonard Talmy, guided by Slobin’s methodology of language comparison and data collecting, this dissertation gives a systemic description and analysis to the expression of motion event in Mandarin Chinese. We use Frog, where are you? a picture storybook without words to get the eliciting data about motion events, which are the main material we research on. First, by data analysis, this dissertation argues that Mandarin Chinese is a satellite-framed language in different perspectives, and then gives a quantitative description and qualitative analysis to the language expression and pragmatic style of the main factors of a motion event, including figure, ground, path, manner, cause, etc. At last, based on the previous conclusion, this dissertation ends with an error analysis on the motion event interlanguage from Korean Chinese learners.This dissertation consists of nine parts. The first part is a general introduction to the study object, the origin of the topic, study purpose, methods of research, the state of this research, the relevant theory, the research orientation and the frame of the dissertation. The last part is a summary to the whole dissertation, including the conclusion, the innovation points and the limitations as well.The main part of this dissertation consists of seven chapters, and the contents of each chapter are as follows:Chapter one gives a general introduction to Talmy’s theory of framing event, and the definition of motion event. This part gives particular explanation to the important terminologies in this dissertation, such as macro-event, framing event, co-event, figure, ground, path, manner, cause, etc.Chafrter two highlights the issue of typology of lexicalization of Mandarin Chinese. Based on Talmy, the world’s languages generally seem to divide into a two-category typology of verb-framed language and satellite-framed language, and this dissertation support that Mandarin Chinese is a satellite-framed language. In Chinese the main verb is always integrated with the co-event. This chapter reviews other researchers’controversial points of view on this issue. From our data, we find Chinese speakers tend to mention more path segments, and use less bare verb to express the motion events, which both further prove that Chinese is a satellite-framed language.Chapter three introduces the characteristics of the co-event verbs in Mandarin Chinese. Chinese is a satellite-framed language, the main verb of which is always co-event verb, including manner verb and cause verb. Only in the self-agentive sentence the path verb has the chance to take the place of main verb. The manner verbs in Mandarin Chinese are always event-centered, but seldom figure-centered, and the manner verb can never take the role of satellite. The cause verbs are necessary in the sentences of agentive motion event.Chapter four gives an explicit description to the expression of path in motion event. First, this chapter gives a clear definition to path and path verb, and then based on the data, the path verbs as main verbs and the path verbs as satellites are introduced separately. The result shows that path verbs Hui and Z6u tend to be the main verbs, while the path verbs Jin, Chu, Shang, Xia, Dao, QI, Guo and Kai, etc, tend to be the satellites. The sentences with path verbs as main verbs are often of irrealis modality. This chapter ends with an introduction to several prepositions, such as Cong, Zai, Xiang, Chdo and Wfing.Chapter five is only to focus on the deictic path verbs Lai and Qu as complement. First, this chapter introduces the deictic function of Lai and Qu in agentive and non-agentive sentences. Qu has the notion of’move in a direction other than toward the speaker; while Lai has the notion of’move towards the participants of communication at the time of speaking or the motion takes/took place’. And then this chapter introduces other functions of Lai and Qu under the perspectives of sentence construction, discourse and situation type. Mandarin Chinese path verbs frequently take the form of a. bipartite verb where a nondeictic element combines with a deictic one or with a ground or figure object. Lai and Qu also have the function of cohesion in the discourse. When Lai or Qu follows a ground object, the sentence always is of a non-perfect situation.Chapter six is about expression of figure and ground in Mandarin Chinese. Figure and ground is a pair of relative conception. Figure can be expressed at the positions of subject, preposition object, or verbal object. The position of the verbal object figure always decides the function of the deictic path verb Ldi and Qu. When the figure follows the deictic path verb, Ldi and Qu only have the function of deixis. When the figure precedes Ldi (Qu is not allowed) in a non-agentive sentence, Ldi seems like a perfect aspect marker, on the contrary, When the figure precedes Ldi or Qu in an agentive sentence, the sentence is always of a non-perfect situation type.Most of the time, only one ground segment (often is Goal) is expressed in a motion event sentence in Mandarin Chinese. Similar with other satellite-framed languages, there are less minus-ground clauses in Mandarin Chinese. The ground information can be expressed by inherent place-noun, optional place-noun, or non-place-noun. The ground objects of Shang, Xia, Jin, Chu can be expressed by non-place-noun. The objects of C6ng, Dao, Zai tend to be locative phrases, while the objects of Shang, Xia, Jin, Chu, Ldi and Qu tend to be place-nouns.At last, in chapter seven, this dissertation analyses the errors of Korean Chinese learners’motion event expression. Eight kinds of typical errors are found from our interlanguage data, which are the omission errors on cause verb in agentive clause, the additional errors on deictic path verbs Ldi and Qu, the errors on the matching between the path verbs and ground words, the errors on locative phrases, the errors on preposition Zai, the omission errors on path verbs, the additional errors on path verbs and co-event verbs, and the sequential errors, etc. All these errors are derived from the typological differences between the two languages of Chinese and Korean.