A Categorizational Approach To The Chinese "you Yi Zhong X Jioa (zuo) Y" Construction

Within the framework of cognitive linguistics, based on the concept that linguisticdecategorization is an integral part of linguistic categorization proposed by Hopper andThompson (1984), this thesis attempts to study the Chinese “You Yi Zhong X Jiao (Zuo) Y”construction, specifically, construction2, the creative use of it in recent years. The thesis isintended to find out the idiosyncratic property of construction2compared with construction1,the conventional use of the Chinese “You Yi Zhong X Jiao (Zuo) Y” construction and thedynamic categorization process of the construction.As the study object of this thesis, construction2is a figure-and-ground constructionwhich highlights factor “Y”, the salient element, via the various semantic relations betweenthem, namely, the manner-and-act relation, object-and-attribute relation, the causal or even theopposite relation with the corresponding syntactic frame [You Yi Zhong X Jiao (Zuo) Y]. Thegrammatical categories of “X” and “Y” are relatively flexible.Construcion1is a genus-species construction which represents the logical relationship ofspecies (Y) to genus (X), mainly used for exemplification or classification.Through detailed statistics of a closed corpus of construction2, the idiosyncratic syntactic,semantic and pragmatic features are discovered and on this basis this thesis supposes thatconstruction2are correlated to construction1but has undergone decategorization andrecategorization. The Chinese “You Yi Zhong X Jiao (Zuo) Y” construction has undergone adynamic categorization process. This process involves three stages, that is, categorization,decategorization and recategorization, of which decategorization plays the central role. Thedecategorization characteristics and the working mechanisms of decategorization andrecategorization are probed into to find out the features of construction2and to account for the motivation and mechanisms of construction2as well as help with the understanding of it.The main findings of this thesis are as follows. Firstly, to account for the correlationbetween construction1and construction2, and to elaborate the motivation and mechanisms ofconstruction2, a model of a dynamic categorization process is proposed based on the conceptthat linguistic decategorization is an integral part of linguistic categorization. The analyticalmodel is successfully employed to illustrate the dynamic categorization process of theChinese “You Yi Zhong X Jiao (Zuo) Y” construction and it is found that the dynamic processof categorization, in a broad sense, represents the development and change of certain languageentities.Secondly, a closed corpus of construction2is established to meet the need of the presentresearch. Through detailed statistics of the corpus, it is found that the idiosyncratic property ofconstruction2lies in the following points. Syntactically, the grammatical categories of “X” and“Y” tend to be flexible by allowing verb phrases, adjective phrases, idioms and even clauses.Semantically, the semantic relation between “X” and “Y” has expanded to manner-and-actrelation, object-and-attribute relation, the causal or even the opposite relation. Pragmatically,construction2, being commendatory or derogatory, is mainly used to convey the speaker’sstrong feeling.Thirdly, to elaborate the analytical model, the dynamic process of categorization, thisthesis conducts a detailed study of the working mechanisms of decategorization andrecategorization. It has been found that oxymoron, as well as metaphor and metonymy, playsa significant role. Therefore, the working mechanisms are reinforced through the introductionof oxymoron.