A DCI Study On The Chinese Neologism “X Di” Construction

Through data collection and analysis, this thesis finds out that the Chinese neologism “X Di” construction has popularized itself in the Internet and newspapers for the features of economicalness, conciseness and novelty. These new constructions are used in different phonological, semantic and pragmatic features with the conventional ones. At present, scholars in approaches of rhetoric, semantic, cognitive linguistics and sociolinguistics have analyzed the phonological, morphologic and semantic features of the Chinese neologism “X Di” construction. However, most of them focus on static description without explaining its generating mechanisms. Besides, the lack of statistic analysis makes the previous researches less convincing.From the perspective of Cognitive Grammar(including Construction Grammar),this thesis establishes a DCI model,a revised version to the present Construction Discourse Theory,by integrating it with the theories of Construction Coercion and Construction Inheritance,to explore the motivation and mechanisms of the generation of the Chinese neologism“X Di”construction as well as its phonological,syntactic,semantic and pragmatic features.At the same time,by an exhaustive data collection from sources of《现代汉语词典》(第6版),《现代汉语新词语词典》,the series of《汉语新词语》(2008-2012)and the Internet,this thesis sets up a closed corpus of366 items to give the Chinese neologism“X Di”construction a qualitative and quantitative analysis.The major findings of this thesis are:Firstly, taking the operating mechanisms of the Construction Coercion Theory and the Construction Inheritance Theory as mending chunks, this thesis revises the present Construction Discourse Theory to establish the DCI model by which the motivation and generating mechanisms of phrases can be explained. Compared with the present application of Construction Discourse Theory to discourse and sentence researches, this model is a bold attempt on phrasal research.Secondly, under the DCI model with detailed data analysis, this thesis gives a systematic explanation to the generating mechanisms of the Chinese neologism “X Di” construction and its features on phonological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels qualitatively and quantitatively.Phonologically, the Chinese neologism “X Di” construction is used in five subtypes of disyllable construction, trisyllable construction, quadrisyllable construction, pent-syllable construction and sept-syllable construction, among which the trisyllable construction takes the largest proportion of 87.70%.Syntactically, the two slots of the Chinese neologism “X Di” construction, the “X” slot and “Di”, are formed with the relation of the modifier and the head word. The “X” slot specifies the most distinctive feature of “Di”. In the 366 items, nominal modifiers take the largest proportion of 46.99%.Semantically, as is coerced by the Species-Genus Construction, the two slots of the Chinese neologism “X Di” construction are coerced to realize the species concept by the “X” slot and the genus concept by “Di”. Meanwhile, as is coerced by Discourse Construction, it takes “top or most” as its prototypical constructional meaning, and gradually shifts its meaning from an emperor of a certain feudal dynasty to the core participant of a news event with no limitation in age, gender, profession and life form. In this construction, the Chinese character “Di” gradually becomes the marker of frequency, ability, extremeness or abnormality with energetic word-building ability. With the coercion of Metaphor Construction, the “X Di” constructions are used in action-agent, patient-agent, skill-subject, possessee-possessor, character-subject, part-whole, instrument-user, and complex metaphorical relations, among which action-agent relation takes the largest proportion of 45.63%.Pragmatically, as is coerced by Discourse Construction, the “X Di” constructions are used with different pragmatic features in different discourse contexts. This usage reveals the language users’ psychological tendency of pursuing economicalness and novelty, as well as their subjectivity in evaluating a news event.