| “X+门(Men)” is a relatively new expressive pattern in Chinese originating from a literal translation of “Watergate Scandal”. The “X-gate” structure is used in other foreign languages but has a fundamental difference after some change or development under Chinese background. Most previous research tends to regard the Chinese “X+门” expression as a product and stretch of the “X-gate” structure in foreign languages.They mainly lay an importance on the exhaustive descriptive explanations from the perspective of semantic meanings, morphological structures and productive origins of the concrete “X+门” instances but ignore the unity of this expressive pattern. Some scholars adopt “meme theory” to explore the social origins of Chinese “X+ 门 ”expression but, in fact, this expressive pattern has become an unusual yet stable Chinese language phenomenon. In addition, traditional structural linguistics theories concentrate on conventional linguistic phenomena rather than so-called marginalized language, such as “X+门” and the kind. As a consequence, a set of limitations are set on the research on this linguistic phenomenon according to traditional structural linguistics theories.Therefore, this paper adopts Cognitive Construction Grammar proposed by Goldberg with some amendments as the theoretical framework and guidance. Most“X+门” instances originate from net and they have the features of high propagation speed and disappearance speed, so the author selects the last ten years’ new neologisms published by The Language Situation in China from 2006 to 2014 as the linguistic data. Based on the linguistic data, the research object “X+门” construction will be extracted from “X+ 门 ” instances. The author firstly explores the common features and regularities guided by the concept of construction through actual “X+门”instances and achieves a comprehensive and general definition of “X+ 门 ”construction, which testifies the feasibility and scientificity of this theoretical angle;moreover, there are semantic interactions between “X+ 门 ” construction and the words entering it. The construction coercion will play an important role in clearing up possible conflicts to promote this construction gradually to form, establish and be vigorous. This part also provides a powerful explanation on the reasons as to why the entering of verbs does not change the nominal property of this construction.Cognitive mechanism will naturally be illustrated through the exploration of theinternal interactions between this construction and its constituents. In addition, the high frequency of this construction, featured in Chinese persons’ lives, essentially influences the cognitive mechanism of its construction; kinds of constructional coercion including morphological coercion, semantic coercion and socio-cultural coercion function as the crux role in consolidating this constructional cognitive mechanism, which helps people understand, apply and create some new “X+ 门 ”expressions even with limited information. Trying her best, the author hopes to build a more general and powerful explanatory framework for “X+门” expressions from a new theoretical perspective. It is believed that this research will contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of languages and promote the popularization and application of the Chinese language. |
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