The Cognitive Motivation And Generative Mechanisms In The Grammaticalization Of "Ai V Bu V"

“Ai v bu v” is a commonly-used spoken expression in modern Chinese. After thelong-term of using, this kind of structure has gradually formed the relatively fixed meaningand usage, which is often used in our spoken language and literature works because of itsbriefness and pithiness. Such as “爱理不理”、“爱回来不回来”、“爱干嘛干嘛”and so on.On the surface, the structure is shortened from the contraction and ellipsis sentence, thatis “if you would like to do, you can do it; or you needn’t.” After abbreviating, the expression“ai v bu v” can be used as the predicate, attribute, adverbial and also the clause. It can expressthe action choices of the hearer and the unpleasant feeling of the speaker. So the constant “ai”of this structure is not the literal meaning “like to do something” and the conjunction of the“ai v” and “bu v” seems ungrammatical. Logically speaking, it seems a bit contradictory thatthe variable “v”can co-occur with “bu v” without the linking of the adversative conjunctionto express whether the hearer “do” or “not to do”. Moreover, this structure emerges a specialstructural meaning which is the coexistence of the hearer’s “do up to oneself” and theunpleasant feeling of the speaker. Therefore, it is very fascinating to study the internalmechanism of the structure.This phenomenon has been discussed by many scholars in the previous studies, whichconcentrate more on the structure itself and the constructional features. As for thegrammaticalization of the structure, most of the researchers are focus on the formdevelopment of “ai v bu v” roughly without the consideration of its cognitive motivation.Based on the consideration above, this thesis aims to study the generative mechanisms underthe effects of reanalysis and analogy as well as the motivations during the grammaticalizationof “ai v bu v”, especially about how the construction is accepted by people and what thecognitive motivations are from the aspects of form and meaning.First of all, this thesis treats “ai v bu v” as a construction and then the components partsof the construction will be analyzed, and at last, we will discuss the comprehensive features ofit. After all these studies, we can divide the semantic meaning into three types, which are theselection meaning, the hypothesis meaning and the constructional meaning. However, the former two meaning can be restored to their original structures without the meaning change.As for the third type of its semantic meaning, we cannot predicate the meaning from thecomponent parts or from the original structure. So this study will apply thegrammaticalization theory to analyze what the motivations are and how the structure isformed.The thesis can be divided into six parts.In chapter one, the author introduces the object and the necessity of the study. Besides,the related questions and data collection are also proposed.The second part of the thesis is about the literature review. And the previous studies onthe contraction sentences and on the structure of “ai v bu v” will be illustrated.In chapter three, the theory of grammaticalization will be introduced, especially themotivations and the generative mechanisms of grammaticalization. Besides, thegrammaticalization across the clauses will be discussed for the sake of later analysis.In chapter four, the author will treat the structure of “ai v bu v” as a construction to studyits component parts and the features.In chapter five, which is an important part for this thesis, the research of “ai v bu v” willbe elaborated under the theory of grammaticalization. In this part, we shall study, successively,the development process, the motivations and the mechanisms during the grammaticalization.The structure “ai v bu v” is found to be used as early as in Qing dynasty and is prevailing inmodern Chinese. As time goes by and the society develops, the structure obtains a frequentusage after its constantly self-updating, and possesses a plenty of new features in syntax andsemantics. Besides, it is the reanalysis and analogy as well as the disyllabification andpeople’s Gestalt psychology that play an important role in promoting the changes both in itsform and meaning during the grammaticalization.At last, in chapter six, a rough conclusion will be given to summarize the main findingsof the study, and some limitations are also pointed out.