The Interpretation Of "X 嘛? Construction": Construction And Lexicon Interactive Coercion Model

Up to now, there have been sharp divergences on the definitions of"嘛"in Chinese linguistic community and three types of interpretations on"X嘛?"Construction have been proposed, namely, Error type, Interchangeability type, Acceptance type, however, no detailed research and corpus analysis have ever been conducted. This thesis proposes Construction and Lexicon Interactive Coercion Model based upon integration of Michaelis'exocentric and endocentric coercions, Goldberg's construction coercion, Panther & Thornburg's lexical coercion and Taylor's bondedness coercion and applies this model to the analysis of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features of"X嘛?"Construction, together with closed-corpora: 516 examples from Center for Chinese Linguistics ( CCL ), Xinhua Website and Guangming Daily.Out of necessity of man's use and construal, coercion is ubiquitous in the integration of schematic construction and its slot filler. Construction and Lexicon Interactive Coercion Model proposed in this thesis is applicable to the interpretation of"X嘛?"Construction. This thesis argues that the interactive relation between Question Construction and its slot filler: final modal particle or final pronoun"嘛"contributes to the interactive coercion of both sides, which promotes the diversity and variety in terms of syntax, semantics and pragmatics.By analysis, we find that"嘛"originates in North Song Dynasty, and serves as modal particle and pronoun. According to this standard,"X嘛?"Construction is divided into normal"X嘛?"Construction and"X (干)嘛?"Construction. As per strength of interrogation,"X嘛?"Construction forms a"strong interrogation, weak interrogation, rhetorical question"continuum. The interpretation of"X嘛?"Construction by means of Construction and Lexicon Interactive Coercion Model brings forth the following result: Construction and Lexicon Interactive Coercion Model argues that if and only if construction and its filled lexical items are inconsistent with each other, the interactive coercion from both sides will be activated to eliminate the inconsistency and contradiction. This process is called accommodation-oriented coercion, which is realized by construction coercion and lexical coercion. If and only if construction and its filled lexical items are consistent with each other, their meaning will be strengthened and diversified through interactive coercion from both sides. This process is called strength-oriented coercion, which is realized by bondedness interactive coercion.Strong Interrogation"X嘛?"Construction is produced through construction coercion of Interrogative Construction, which enables"嘛"to regain its identity as an interrogative marker. Rhetorical Question"X(干)嘛?"embodies construction coercion of Rhetorical Question Construction, by which,"嘛"is assigned to play a new role of rhetorical question marker. In the meantime, lexical coercion of final modal particle"嘛"causes the weakening of interrogative function of Interrogative Construction, as a result, Weak Interrogation"X嘛?"Construction is produced to substitute the whole interrogation category by means of metonymic mechanism. The combinations of final modal particle"嘛"and Rhetorical Question Construction, interrogative pronoun"嘛"and Interrogative Construction lead to bondedness interactive coercion, which causes the maximum prominance of semantic and pragmatic features of the schematic constructions, as a result, strength-oriented interactive coercion constructs are yielded.Judging from data distribution, in the continuum of"strong interrogation < weak interrogation < rhetorical question"of"X嘛?"Construction, the strength of interrogation is inversely proportional to the number of constructs in the closed-corpora, which account for 16.67%<35.27%<48.06% respectively. This conclusion indicates that"嘛", as an interrogative modal particle, will step down from the historical stage after the official differentiation of"嘛"and"吗"in modern times, while the pronoun"嘛", which originates as an interrogative pronoun in the dialect, is most likely to develop into an exclamatory marker or a rhetorical question marker.The contributions of the thesis includes:First, this thesis conducts a comprehensive analysis of the point of departure, advantages and disadvantages of Michaelis'exocentric and endocentric coercions, Goldberg's construction coercion, Panther & Thornburg's lexical coercion and Taylor's bondedness coercion, based upon which, Construction and Lexicon Interactive Coercion Model is proposed in an attempt to interpret"X嘛?"Construction and its rich syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features. And this thesis conducts a further discussion on the relationship between sentence and word concerned about by linguistic philosophy.Second, the origin of final modal particle"嘛"is identified, which corrects the mistaken interpretations of"嘛"by吕叔湘,石毓智and黄伯荣; the differentiations of modal particle and pronoun"嘛"and"吗"are expounded and the motivation of"X嘛?"Construction is explained. In addition, the sphere of application of"X(干)嘛?"Construction is studied and, for the first time, this construction is comprehensively analysed.Last but not the least, this thesis combines cognitive research with the study of punctuation marks, which intends to extend the horizon of cognitive linguistics. Based upon classification and analysis of the functions of question mark, and former scholars'related conclusions, this thesis proposes and defines a new concept: Question Construction in an attempt to develop the applicable scope of question mark.