"A Before B Does" Construction Research

As a commonly used construction in modern spoken Chinese,"A cai B ne" shows distinct features on syntactics, semantics and pragmatics, and the formation of its constructional meaning can be explained from the point of cognition.The constructional meaning of " A cai B ne" is negation and refutation. Variable "A" can be acted as first, second and third person deixis and constructional meaning is influenced by different persons. Variable "B" can be acted as verbs, verb phrases, nouns and adjectives."B" is usually derogatory but sometimes neutral. Constants can be omitted in specific conditions and the whole becomes variant "AB"."A cai B ne" expresses passive emotions and different subgroups apply to different communicational situations. Trigger words of "A cai B ne" include the simple and the complicated, and they can be divided into obvious and hidden types on existing form."A" acts as contrastive focus when the construction impresses indirect negation and "A" acts as topical focus with "B" as contrastive focus when it impresses direct negation. Modal stress and focus-sensitive operator " cai" are used to form the focus. By means of lexical cohesion including primitive word and summarized word, Cohesive function of "A cai B ne" is to respond and explain.Deductive reasoning is the main way of its negative mechanism. The major premise and minor premise are activated in cognitive context and lead together into conclusion. Subjectivity of "A cai B ne" can be seen on perspective and emotion. Speaker expresses his/her attitude from self-perspective."A cai B ne "shows refute through acting, knowing and speaking in the three conceptual domains. The differences between "Acai B ne"and " Ao cai Bo ne" mainly show on choosing of components, syntactic form and programmatic using.