A Cognitive Study Of X Shenme X Construction

There is a typical expression X shenme X in Chinese, which is always used in dailyconversation, expressing negative meaning and the speaker’s dissatisfaction. Since1980s,more and more scholars pay attention to this construction. Their studies mainly focus onsyllable, syntactic, semantic and pragmatics properties of X shenme X construction. Inrecent years, with development and application of cognitive construction grammar, studyof this construction has become one of the research hotspots. Comparatively speaking,most of previous studies of X shenme X construction are still on descriptive level.Although, several researches involve concepts of construction grammar, so far there hasbeen no scholar who has deeply analyzed this construction from the perspective ofmeaning formation or underlying cognitive mechanism.Taking Goldberg’s Cognitive Construction Grammar as theoretical foundation, thisthesis attempts to provide a comprehensive interpretation of X shenme X construction fromcognitive perspective.First of all, this thesis will verify that X shenme X is not a simple syntactic sentencepattern, but a conceptual construction according to Goldberg’s definition of constructionand her principles to judge the existence of a construction.Secondly, following the Usage-based Model, this thesis will make quantitativeanalysis of the data collected from naturally-occurring corpus, which shows that there aretwo possible categories of X shenme X construction: negative imperative (X1shenme X1)and negative statement (X2shenme X2). Also superficial features of each category will besummarized.Thirdly, cognitive analysis of X shenme X construction will be respectively provided.When different words enter X1shenme X1construction, they will be coerced by theconstruction in different degrees and these processes involve different kinds ofmetonymical mechanism, which also play an important role in meaning formation ofconstructions. Meanwhile, instances of X2shenme X2construction in different contextsrepresent a continuum of negative mood from strong to weak and a continuum ofsubjectivity from high to low. It is also a reflection of the concept of category put forward by cognitive linguistics.Finally, tentative interpretation of usage restrictions of X shenme X construction willbe offered, most of which are generated by situational context. X1shenme X1constructionalso proposes some restrictions related with cognitive mechanism, while X2shenme X2construction particularly adds necessary condition of the context to common ones.