A CIS Cognitive Analysis On Chinese Construction "You Yizhong X Jiao Y"

In recent years,“you yizhong X jiao Y” novel construction (e.g.有一种�'冷叫忘穿秋裤) is becoming more and more popular in the internet, especially innews titles. Different from the traditional “you yizhong X jiao X1”construction (e.g.有一种水果叫苹果), X and Y in the novel construction has no inclusion relationship,that is, Y does not belong to the category of X and X is not the super ordinate word.Thus, the rationale of X and Y turns out to be the research focus of the thesis.Scholars used to discuss this novel construction from the perspectives ofrhetoric, semantic and pragmatic. While no systematic analysis from CognitiveLinguistics (CL) perspectives is adopted in the previous studies. Under the frameworkof CL (including Construction Grammar), motivated by the inadequacy of separatelyapplication of Construction Coercion and Inheritance, ICM, and Salience Principle,the author establishes a new cognitive model—the CIS Model (see chapter three).Then, all the466language items (news titles) in the corpus are analyzed under theCIS Model in a qualitative and quantitative way. The syntactic, semantic andpragmatic features of all the language items are discussed in detail (see chapter four).This study is oriented to provide a comparatively comprehensive cognitive system forthis novel construction.Under the framework of CIS Model, the466items have been systematicallyanalyzed and the main findings of the thesis are as follows:To begin with,“you yizhong X jiao Y”syntactically inherits the properties ofChinese dual-function construction with “you”.“You yizhong X” is the dualfunction part, which means, it is not only the object of verb “you”, but also the subjectof “jiao Y”.Besides, in all466items, X and Y in41%items share the same part of speech,while in59%items, X and Y differ in part of speech (Due to the complexity of the part of speech of Chinese words, the author chooses the first one of the part of speechin every word item via looking into the sixth edition of Dictionary of ContemporaryChinese.). Moreover, when X and Y fall to the same part of speech, nouns or nominalphrases account for40.6%，verbs or verbal phrases account for46.9%and adjectivestake up12.5%. From this, we can figure out that the lexical entries of X and Y aremostly nouns or verbs.Furthermore, the position of X and Y cannot be exchanged. To make it clear, theconstruction cannot be expressed like “youyizhong Y jiao X”. Examples arediscussed and make it certified.Secondly, because of the extreme arbitrariness of the semantic collocation of Xand Y, it is really tough work for the author to find a more specified standard for thesemantic classification. Through careful observation, the author finally divides thesemantic relations between X and Y into two types: Semantic Compatibility andSemantic Incompatibility. With the application of CIS Model, X and Y in375itemsare semantic compatible, whereas, X and Y are incompatible in semantic in93items.Consequently, although the semantic collocation between X and Y is very arbitraryand subjective, through analysis with the widely applicable CIS Model, the itemswhere X and Y are semantic compatible account for the majority in the corpus, whichis up to81%.Lastly, in pragmatic aspect, the novel construction is endowed with threecharacteristics, namely, novelty, subjectivity and topic orientation. Among the threefeatures, the subjectivity not only is represented by the arbitrary collocation of X andY, but also lies in the construe of the readers. Again, for all the language items in thecorpus are news titles, the novelty of the construction and estrangement of theconventional construction perfectly suit as the features of titles.