A Study Of Lexicalization Patterns Of Motion Events In Chinese:a Corpus-based Approach

Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. Yet there are thousands of languages all over the world, and in order to achieve a better understanding of them, we have to find certain ways to categorize them into different classes. That is the focus of linguistic typology. On the basis of how languages differ in their characteristic lexicalization patterns of motion events, Tamly (2000) introduced a new approach to language typology, which is now called the Motion-framing typology. This typology categorizes languages into two kinds:the verb-framed language expressing path in the main verb and the satellite-framed language expressing path in the satellite. The typological preference of Chinese has been a controversial issue for linguists both in China and abroad. Talmy (2000) claimed that Chinese was a strong satellite-framed language, while Tai (2003) thought that Chinese was a verb-framed language. Slobin (2004) proposed a revised third type for Chinese as an equipollently-framed language.This thesis aims to figure out which type Chinese belongs to and what kind of lexicalization patterns most frequently appear in Chinese. The study selected ten thousand sentences containing the Chinese character lai (来)from the CCL corpus and analyzed6715sentences in terms of the motion event. The result shows that the lexicalization patterns only expressed by Chinese path verbs in the motion event can be classified into four catories:(a) Motion+Path+Figure (23.23%),(b) Motion+Path+Figure+Ground (13.92%),(c) Motion+Path (7.74%), and (d) Motion+Path+Ground (4.69%). The sum of these percentages is49.85%. Meanwhile, the other lexicalization patterns that express motion events by combining the path verb with the manner verb account for half of the total number. This result indicates that path verbs can be used independently as well as in the serial verb constructions. The frequencies of the two categories of lexicalization patterns are almost the same. Therefore, according to this analysis, the expression of motion events in Chinese is not close to the verb-framed language or the satellite-framed language; instead, it belongs to the equipollently-framed language.The major findings of this study are expected to contribute to revisiting the framing typology of the Chinese language and then improving the teaching and learning of Chinese. A new paradigm is also proposed by applying corpus in the study of some complicated language phenomena. Moreover, the different expressions of motion events can also lead us to explore the different uses of physical motions to conceptualize some abstract ideas.