A Cognitive Study Of The Chinese New Construction "N Bei X"

Chinese "Bei construction" attracts the attention of scholars of various theoretical persuasions, such as the structuralism, transformation-generative grammar (TG), and cognitive grammar. However, now there appears a kind new linguistic phenomenon which are exemplified by "bei jiuye(被就业)","bei zisha(被自杀)","bei xiaokang(被小康)"etc. In our study, it is schematized as "N Bei X" to distinguish it from "Bei construction". The characteristics of "N Bei X" greatly challenged the traditional theories. Due to its special features, "N Bei X" attracts the interests of many scholars. Through their effort, much has been achieved, but their studies mainly focused upon describing the structure, and studying the social source of generating this structure. The characteristics embodied by this construction cannot be explained by traditional grammar. There are two most salient problems about this construction unsettled. This first is why non-transitive verbs such as "jiuye(就业)","zisha(自杀)"and "xiaokang(小康)"can collocate with the character"bei(被)"no matter semantically and syntactically. And the second is why we cannot figure out the meaning of the construction without the support of context. We call the first problem the syntactic and semantic conflicts between "X" part and"bei(被)",and the second the semantic unautonomy of "N Bei X". Obviously, these two problems loom large for traditional linguistic approach.This paper is corpus-based, which gives a cognitive study about Chinese new construction "N Bei X" in the framework of Goldberg's construction grammar. We hold that "N Bei X" is an independent construction that is related yet distinctive from the classical Chinese "Bei construction". On the one hand, it inherits the negative "suffering" meaning from "Bei construction"; on the other, it is a polysemous construction which includes two kinds of construction meanings:(1) the patient being declared as something which is usually not true; (2) the patient being forced to do something against his/her will. We maintain that because of construction coercion that non-transitive verbs without the feature of RESULT and ACTION like "jiuye(就业)","zisha(自杀)",and "buming zhenxiang(不明真相)"can enter this construction. In this process the "suffering" meaning of the construction takes precedence over the lexical meaning of "X", thus force the "X" part of the construction to accept the construction meaning. In this way, the construction can be accepted.Comparing with classical "Bei construction", "N Bei X" conveys more information. In "Bei construction", the patient is affected directly by the action produced by the agent. But in "N Bei X", the patient is not affected by "X"; rather, it is affected by an event. In this study, "N Bei X" is analyzed as an event complex which consists of two events: framing event and co-event. The framing event is "the patient is affected by an event" and the co-event is "the agent initiate a certain event". Through study, we find that "X" part of "N Bei X" in fact a part of co-event. Its major roles in the co-event are RESULT, MANNER, INSTRUMENT and PURPOSE. In "N Bei X", "X" stands for the whole event, and thus "X" functions as a mental access to the whole event. In this way, it can be analyzed as a metonymic use.But the metonymy here is different from what other scholars like Ruiz de Mendoza's (2001,2006) classification. Before, the study of metonymy focused on the lexical level, i.e. one word is used to replace another word. But here, we use one word to replace an event. On the base of Ruiz de Mendoza's classification of metonymy, we propose the hypothesis of "high-level event metonymy" in contrast with the classical "high-level lexical metonymy" to better explain the event complex "N Bei X". Given that "X" has different roles in the co-event as we mentioned above, we further categorize the high-level event metonymy into the RESULT FOR EVENT metonymy, the MANNER FOR EVENT metonymy, the INSTRUMENT FOR EVENT metonymy and the PURPOSE FOR EVENT metonymy. Through analysis, we found that the role RESULT, MANNER, INSTRUMENT and PURPOSE have causal relations with the co-event, which provide motivation for the metonymic operations.The creativity of this paper lies in the following aspects:firstly, we partition the "N Bei X" as framing and co-event in cognitive perspective to better explain this construction; secondly, we believe the construction coercion is the cognitive motivation behind the semantic and syntactic conflicts; thirdly, we propose high-level event hypothesis, in which a better and more reasonable explanation is offered for the co-event which are represented by "X" part.This study implies that the vogue expressions in Chinese have its fundamental social basis, and the new expression is not coming all of a sudden. They are constructed on the base of the existent expressions. Finally, the formation of "N Bei X" is the result of accuracy of expression and cognitive characteristics.