| This dissertation provides a description of some of the common Mandarin conditional constructions, with a focus on describing the contributions of the linking devices to the conditional interpretations and their interactions with other elements in constructions. The analyses are based on corpus data and include studies on the pragmatic uses of conditionals. The discussion endeavors to show how cognitive structures link to linguistic structures and how spaces are built and frames evoked. Consequently, the research does not just provide a syntactic description, but offers an in-depth discussion of epistemic stance and grounding of information indicated by the linking devices.; The analysis here shows that cognitive approaches such as Construction Grammar, Theory of Mental Spaces, Gestalt psychology, and Embodied Construction Grammar can successfully describe the subtle semantic nuances of constructional meaning, and the different reasoning processes evoked by different conditional constructions. I examine semantic differences between the variants of particular Mandarin conditional constructions, which have not been captured before in previous analyses. Since English conditionals have been completely analyzed in terms of mental spaces, I systematically contrast Mandarin conditionals with English ones. This analysis includes the unambiguous conditional constructions, the exceptive conditional constructions, and the counterfactual constructions. Using Embodied Construction Grammar notation, this research provides the first formalized grammar of Mandarin conditional constructions. In this formalized grammar, the constructions are represented in such a way that semantic features can be separated and linked to cognitive structures such as image schemas and mental spaces and are potentially implementable by computers. |
