A RCI Study On The Counter-Expectation Construction “Meiyou X De A,Queyou Y De B”

In recent years a counter-expectation construction“??????,??????”is very popular in Chinese.According to this expression,many people imitate its pattern and generate 150 items which can be abstracted as“Meiyou X de a,Queyou Y de b”(short for“MQ-Construction”).So far,some scholars have studied its related constructions,however,no one is found to study“MQ-Construction”and its cognitive mechanism,let alone establish a corpus.According to Cognitive Linguistics(CL)(including Construction Grammar),the paper aims to develop Reference Point into Multiple Reference Point Theory(MRP in short)and combine it with Construction Coercion-inheritance to establish RCI model(R stands for Multiple Reference Point Theory,C stands for Coercion Theory,and I stands for Inheritance Theory).The model is used to explain the generating mechanism of construction from two dimensions.Firstly,at the syntagmatic level,the paper intends to expound the inner cognitive mechanism of three types of the construction,that is,to make clear how the construction is perceived and understood.As for the construction,“X” and “Y” are reference points of “a” and “b” respectively,and “Meiyou X de a” is the reference point of “Queyou Y de b”.The integration of three reference points prove that the semantic focus is “Queyou Y de b”.Secondly,at the paradigmatic level,the paper focuses on illustrating coercion and inheritance among three types of the construction,that is,we have to know how the prototypical construction is developed into two non-prototypical constructions.The paper abides by the general approaches of Cognitive Grammar,and explains the cognitive mechanism of the construction from the syntactic,semantic and pragmatic levels.Meanwhile,we search for the data exhaustively from two largest searching engines in China: Baidu and Google,thus obtaining 150 items which will be analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively.On the basis of the RCI model and data,we find that at the syntactic level,the construction can be divided into three types according to the part of speech of “X” and “Y”.As the Table 1 shows,Type A1 arouses people's imitation because of its unique pragmatic effect,so it is the prototypical construction and has the largest quantity.Type A2 and Type B are construction variants which are produced by the RCI model,but with small quantity.At the syntactic level,we have discussed its constructional components and the structural forms.(1)As for the components,the construction is composed of invariable and variable ones.“X” and “Y” are mostly concrete nouns(including proper nouns and descriptive nouns)or abstract nouns.(2)As for the structural forms,its first half is a negative clause beginning with “Meiyou”,while the second half is a positive clause with “ Que”.At the semantic level,“Que” serves as a connecting link between the preceding and the following.“Meiyou X de a” as the reference point leads to “Que” which is the semantic focus.Furthermore,there exists mutual coercion between the construction and its two parts.The first part and the second part must have opposing semantic relation.At the pragmatic level,the construction has humorous,mocking and ridiculing effect by contrasting and counter-expectation information.The construction expresses the comparative features of “X” and “Y” and the speaker's mood,which is a subjective functional pattern.Human beings have the ability of reasoning.Since the “MQ-Construction” is becoming popular in Chinese,sensitive people have promptly imitated it,amounting to 150 items which form a new rhetoric device.