The Conceptualization And Syntax Of English And Chinese Adjectives

Different languages may employ different methods to conceptualize the real world, which potentially affect the syntactic representations of the related words. By focusing on adjectives in English and Chinese, this dissertation addresses the differences of conceptualization and their effects on syntax. Conceptualization, which refers to various kinds of phenomena related to semantic expression, has multiple interpretations. In general, it includes two paradigms. One of them introduces dynamic cognitive processes into grammatical analysis. People adopt different ways of conceptualization because they cognize the world from different perspectives. The other paradigm investigates cognitive outcomes, or semantic structure. People of a nation regularize their cognitive outcomes of the external world with words and form their concepts. However, people of different nations have their own ways to cognize the world, which results in different segmentations of the same phenomenon in different languages, and generates distinctions concerning the contents that words include. The discussions of the conceptualization of the property and quantity features of English and Chinese adjectives in this study involve these two paradigms.The dissertation adopts the inductive method and makes quantitative and qualitative analyses. The quantitative approach is first applied in the investigation of the segmentation on different quantity levels of289pairs of adjectives in English and Chinese. On the basis of this, different types of adjectives are identified. Then, in order to reveal the similarities and differences of their syntactic capabilities, the quantitative approach is applied to depicting the different syntactic behaviors of the289pairs of adjectives. The qualitative approach is primarily used to analyze the semantic structure, cognitive motivation and psychological mechanism of the conceptualization.This dissertation discusses the conceptualizations of the property features and the quantity features of English and Chinese adjectives and their effects on the syntax of the adjectives. The differences between English and Chinese in the conceptualization of the property features of adjectives are significant, and an important discovery has been made in the previous studies that the Chinese view the different degrees of properties as dynamic processes and assign temporal features to their adjectives, which are thus made similar to verbs semantically and syntactically, and that the English consider properties to be stative and therefore adjectives in English lack a temporal process in their concepts (Shi&Bai2006c). However, this conclusion lacks substantial supporting evidence from other languages. The cross-linguistic materials of this dissertation indicate that English and Chinese are not the only languages that are different in the conceptualization of the property features of adjectives. The absence of certain semantic feature in conceptualization can be manifested in syntax, and this is illustrated by the use of the copula in many languages, which expresses temporal information and forms the complex predicate with adjectives.From a synchronic point of view, the differences between English and Chinese in the conceptualization of the property features of adjectives lead to the differences in the extension of adjectives to other parts of speech. According to the statistics shown by the289pairs of English and Chinese adjectives in this dissertation, Chinese adjectives are more inclined to extend to verbs while English adjectives tend to extend to nouns. From a diachronic point of view, no language will stay still but changes dynamically. Based on authoritative English reference books, this dissertation inspects the parts of speech marked by these books over the last four decades and some of the changes reflected within them are worthy of note and deserve consideration. An example in point is that a number of English adjectives have gradually gained the capability of being used as verbs.English and Chinese adjectives display great similarity in the conceptualization of their quantity features. On the one hand,271pairs of adjectives, accounting for93.8%of the total289pairs, show consistency in "quantitative" and "non-quantitative" features as defined in this dissertation; on the other hand, based on the possibility of their being collocated with ’a little’,’very’,’complete’ and ’youdian’(有点),’hen’(很),’zui’(最) respectively, the289pairs of English and Chinese adjectives are classified into5categories, namely, zero-range, extreme-range, mid-range, half-range and all-range adjectives. Among them, the first three belong to "quantitative" adjectives and the latter two "non-quantitative" ones. Furthermore, by examining authoritative reference books and relevant corpora, this dissertation depicts the syntactic behaviors of the5types of adjectives when they function as attribute and predicate/predicative, occur in comparative, exclamatory and negative sentences. In general, the syntactic capabilities of all-range, half-range, extreme-range and zero-range adjectives in English and Chinese demonstrate a’strong-to-weak’tendency, as their quantity performance goes in a descending order. This tendency can be indicated as follows:all-range>half-range>extreme-range> zero-range.Meanwhile, there are also some differences in the conceptualization of the quantity features of English and Chinese adjectives and their effects on the syntax, which are mainly manifested in the following:1) most of the corresponding members of English zero-range adjectives in Chinese are all-range and half-range adjectives, in which a regularity is discovered:adjectives like wanzhengr(完整),wanquan(完全),which mean whole and complete in Chinese, are non-quantitative and can be modified by the degree modifiers hen(很) and zui(最) and used in the comparative form, while their English counterparts, whole and complete, are quantitative and can not be used in corresponding syntactic patterns;2) most of the corresponding members of English extreme-range adjectives in Chinese are half-range or all-range adjectives; English extreme-range adjectives can occur in the superlative form, while their Chinese counterparts can not only occur in both the comparative and the superlative form, but they can also occur in the exclamatory sentence;3) Chinese mid-range adjectives possess the semantic features of both quantitative and non-quantitative adjectives, not capable of being reduplicated or used in the exclamatory sentence on the one hand, but capable of being used in the comparative form and modified by hen(很) and bu(不) on the other; English mid-range adjectives are weak in their syntactic capability, occurring mostly in the attributive and the predicative position. Due to the limited number of this type of adjectives, the regularity of their syntactic behavior requires further discussion. Differences between English and Chinese adjectives in conceptualization result from the different ways of construal of the two peoples. Differences in the conceptualization of the property features result from their selection between summary scanning and sequential scanning during the process of construal. English selects summary scanning, which mirrors the consequence of scanning and highlights static and non-temporal relation, while Chinese selects sequential scanning, which highlights temporal relation by emphasizing the scanning process and time-extension within it. Similarly, the different segmentations of the quantity features in conceptualizing the same semantic category also result from the different ways of construal. The selections between summary scanning and sequential scanning and the segmentations of the quantity features both involve the psychological mechanism of attention. One of the functions of attention is selective attention, which enables people to pay attention to some stimuli and neglect others. External stimuli vary in kind. People do not simply copy them but select them consciously. As to the conceptualization discussed in this dissertation, English-speaking and Chinese-speaking peoples have their own ways to select what semantic features to be included in a concept and what to be filtered out from the concept. This process of active stimuli selecting is inseparable from the psychological mechanism of attention. Therefore, it is tentatively suggested in this dissertation that the attention mechanism is the psychological mechanism underlying conceptualization and plays an important role in it.It is believed that it has significant implications to clarify the characteristics of the semantic systems of English and Chinese and reveal their grammatical commonalities and individualities through cross-linguistic studies. Furthermore, the discussion of conceptualization has certain reference value for aspects like bi-lingual instruction and Chinese teaching to foreign students. Meanwhile, the exploration of the psychological mechanism involved in conceptualization not only enhances the understanding of the conceptualization theory, but it can also guide linguistic research in a more effective way.