| “Mingming ke yi X,pianpian que yao Y” is a Chinese structure to express adversative meaning.However,in 2015,a new use of this structure to express progressive meaninghas gained popularization on the Internet.By analyzing the data collected,this paper considers that “mingming ke yi X,pianpian que yao Y” is a complex sentence construction whichcontains two different understandings at the same time.The original construction meaning highlightsthefeasibility of X,and expresses the disappointment of the speaker by comparing it with the actual result Y.The meaning of the construction can be interpreted as “X but Y”;on the contrary,the new construction meaning pretends to degrade Y,which contrastswith X,and show the speaker's higher praise for Y,means “not only X but also Y”.Many scholars have studied “mingming” and “pianpian” from the perspectives of syntax,semantics and pragmatics.However,there is no study concerning “mingming ke yi X,pianpian que yao Y” as a construction.This paper intends to apply Construction Grammar to complex sentences from the perspective of cognitive linguistics,and combines construction coercion and lexical coercion theories with prominence viewinFigure/GroundTheory to create Hierarchical Salience Framework.This frameworkexplores the working mechanism of new construction meaning of “mingming ke yi X,pianpian que yao Y” and further elaborates how the old construction meaningtransfer to the new one.At the same time,through the searching engine Baidu and the social network Weibo,this paper conducts an exhaustive research on the construction “mingming ke yi X,pianpian que yao Y”,and collects a total of 220 items to form a closed corpus for qualitative and quantitative analysis.The main contributions of this thesis are:First of all,the construction “mingming ke yi X,pianpian que yao Y” is a complex sentence construction.There are many researches on lexical construction in cognitive linguistics while much less on complex sentence construction.Also,this paper not only discusses the working mechanism of the novel use of the construction,but also studies howtraditional and novel use of the constructional interacts.Secondly,the newly established HS frameworkintegratesprominence view and the interaction between construction and lexical coercion to interpret construction meanings.Finally,the author builds a small closed corpus and uses the data to make a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the syntax,semantics,and pragmatic features of the construction which makes the study more convincing:The study found that syntactically,X and Y can have more syntactic categories in the traditional use of the construction.However,clauses and verb phrasesare dominant components in the novel use(78.4%).Semantically,the semantic emotion of X and Y are the key factors for whether X and Y can enter the construct.In general,when X and Y express positive semantics and negative semantics respectively,they tend to make the construction show adversative relation.When X and Y both express positive semantics,they express new construction meaning.As for construction meaning,lexical coercion and construction coercion are interacted: when construction meaning coerces lexical meaning,the construction meaning is highlighted.The semantic structure at this time is “objective condition +(subjective desire)+ negative result”;when lexical meaningcoerces the construction meanings,lexical meaning is highlighted.The semantic structure is “objective condition +(subjective desire)+ positive result”.Pragmatically,the construction is restricted by environment,and may gain different pragmatic meanings in different contexts.The novel use of the construction negates the semantic degree of Y,but not lower it as usual,rather,it enhances the semantic degree of Y toshow the unexpected meaning.Therefore,the new construction meaning can be considered as a use of irony whichhas rhetorical features. |
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