A Pragma-Cognitive Study Of ’Wu A Wu B’ Construction

Four-character is a main form for Chinese idioms.‘bu’,‘fei’,‘mei’ and ‘wu’ whichexpress negation in Chinese can also be a part in four-character constructions:‘bu A buB’,‘fei A fei B’,‘mei A mei B’ and ‘wu A wu B’. There are relatively rare researches on‘wu A wu B’ construction in the all researches. They mainly analyze this constructionfrom the perspectives of semantics, syntax and pragmatics. There is no detailed analysison the meaning formation process of the construction. The standards and restrains forthe words which can enter into ‘wu A wu B’ are also not mentioned. The pragmaticeffort of the construction has not been explained in detail. This thesis will focus on ‘wuA wu B’ construction.Based on CCL corpus, a great deal of expressions of ‘wu A wu B’ construction arecollected and classified. This thesis will describe and analyze this construction from theperspectives of cognitive linguistics and pragmatics and summarize the features of ‘wuA wu B’. From the perspective of cognitive linguistics, the meaning formation processof this construction will be analyzed clearly which gives a proof that the conceptualblending theory can explain the meaning formation process of the constructioneffectively. The parts of speech of verbs, adjectives and numerals are changed whenthey come into the construction. The reason of this phenomenon is that they are coerced.The reason and the process of coercion will be discussed in the thesis. The monosyllabicChinese construction coercion make the words which can enter into ‘wu A wu B’ shouldbe monosyllabic words. The features of the construction in linguistic communication areanalyzed from the perspective of pragmatics. Economy principle can explain the reasonswhy the four-character constructions occur and flourish. The frequency criterion inpragmatic markedness theory can distinguish the unmarked use and the marked use ofthe various expressions which can express the same meaning in ‘wu A wu B’.The similarities and differences of the four negative four-character constructionsare also talked about. The differences between ‘mei A mei B’ and ‘wu A wu B’,‘bu A bu B’ and ‘fei A fei B’ are analyzed respectively. The reasons why the use frequencies of‘mei A mei B’ and ‘wu A wu B’ are different and the words are difficult to come intoboth ‘bu A bu B’ and ‘fei A fei B’ constructions are also summarized.There are some findings in this thesis based on the detailed description andexplanation. First, the words which can come into ‘wu A wu B’ construction mostly arenouns. Verbs, adjectives and numerals will have the property of nouns after beingcoerced. Second, A and B in the same expression belong to the same semantic field or ina continuum. Third, the sequence of A and B usually are not arbitrary.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One offers a general introduction tosome basic issues concerning the scope, the objectives, the methodology, data collection,as well as a general outline of the thesis. Chapter Two presents an overview of relevantliterature on four-character construction and four negative constructions. Theachievements and limitations of previous researches are discussed at the end of thischapter. Chapter Three provides cognitive and pragmatic theories. Chapter Fourexplores the meaning formation process of the construction and analysis of markednesstheory and economy principle on the construction. Chapter Five is a conclusion of thewhole thesis which summarizes the contributions and points out the limitations of thecurrent research and also gives suggestions for further studies.