A Cognitive Study Of Mandarin Chinese “Yi VP₁ Jiu VP₂” Construction

Within the framework of Cognitive Grammar, based on the concept that a construction is a linguistic pattern whose some aspects of its form or meaning can't be strictly predicted from its components, this thesis attempts to study the Mandarin Chinese costruction “yi VP₁ jiu VP₂” construction, aiming to find out the syntactic and semantic features of this construction, the relationship between VP₁ and VP₂ in this construction, and its underlying meaning construction.According to Goldberg, a construction is posited in the grammar if it can be shown that its meaning and/or form is not compositionally derived from other constructions existing in the language. Mandarin Chinese construction “yi VP₁ jiu VP₂” is composed of three parts, that is, the sequential framework: “yi…jiu…”, and two variants: VP₁ and VP₂. This study has found out that the meaning of mandarin Chinese “yi VP₁ jiu VP₂” construction can't be fully inferred from its components or other existing Chinese constructions. Moreover, VP₁, VP₂, or the sequential framework “yi…jiu…” alone can't convey the meanings manifested by “yi VP₁ jiu VP₂” construction. The data used in this thesis are all authentic which are extracted from Beijing Language and Culture University?BLCU? Chinese Corpus or the BCC by searching the key words of “yi V jiu V”. Based on the definiton of“yi VP₁ jiu VP₂” construction, we trimmed the data and selected 870 instances as the study basis of this research.Based on the collected data, Chinese“yi VP₁ jiu VP₂” construction is classified into two types in accordance with their syntactic and semantic characteristics. Type I, with the form of “yi VP₁ jiu V2 +?Object?”, emphasizes that two actions happening in a sequnetial order. The VP₂ s in type I can be filled by a single verb or a verb phrase with an object. Type II, with the form of “yi VP₁ jiu V2 + Complement”, is redivided into two subtypes depending on the complements of VP₂s: “yi VP₁ jiu V2 + complement” and “yi VP₁ jiu V2 + Quantifier”. “yi V1 jiu V2 + complement” highlights the irregularity of achieving a result or state by the action. “yi VP₁ jiu V2 + Quantifier” stresses the quantity specified by the verb phrases, which indicates that the time length, result, intensity, difficulties of the action are greater than people's expectations. The quantifier in VP₂ can be the temporal quantifier, or the verb quantifier of the action.The polysemous meanings of“yi VP₁ jiu VP₂” construction are not contributed by the verb phrases or the construction framework separately, which drives us to explore the underlying meaning construction of “yi VP₁ jiu VP₂” construction. The sequential framework, “yi…jiu…”, is a framework that connects two events with certain relation and emphasizes that two events happen right after another. Besides the above meaning, this study finds that“yi VP₁ jiu VP₂” construction can also indicate other relations and other meanings between two events, such as causal relation and condition-result relation. Accordingly, this research proposes that the sequential framework “yi…jiu…” interacts with the verb phrases in the construction in producing the multiple meanings of “yi VP₁ jiu VP₂” construction.Cognitive Lingusitics argues that knowledge of linguistic phenomina, that is, phonemes, morphemes, and syntax, are essentially conceptual in nature. Language is a reflection of people's mind. The sequential framework, “yi…jiu…” is the reflection of people's experience in the world. This thesis further proves that the contruction meanings are not the composite meanings of its components. The meanings of “yi VP₁ jiu VP₂” construction are produced due to the interaction between the sequential framework and the verb phrases in the construction. This thesis might not only put forward some effective schemes for the relevant language phenomena, but also provide evidence in understanding people's cognition of the world.