The Cognitive Analysis Of Semantic Preference Of "Ban A Ban B" And "Ban A Bu B" Constructions

Four-character pattern is a unique language phenomenon in Chinese with refined form and rich meaning."Ban" is a very special morpheme,and its related four-character constructions have attracted the attention of scholars because of their unique semantic functions.At present,the studies of four-character patterns of "ban" are mostly based on the superficial grammatical features of the format,such as syntax,semantics and pragmatics.There are few studies exploring the underlying cognitive motivations for construction meaning from the perspective of cognitive construction grammar.This thesis takes "ban A and ban B" and "ban A and bu B" as the research objectives,and adopts qualitative and quantitative research methods,applying construction grammar and some other related theories of cognitive linguistics to discuss the following four research questions.What are the constitutive characteristics of "ban A ban B" and "ban A bu B" in form? What are the constructional meanings of "ban A ban B" and "ban A bu B"? What pragmatic functions do these two constructions have? What are the underlying cognitive motivations for the semantic fuzziness and negative tendency of the two constructions?Based on the detailed analysis and discussion of the research objectives,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)In "ban A ban B" and "ban A bu B" constructions,the part of speech of changeable components A and B are generally nouns,verbs,adjectives or their morphemes,in which verbs and adjectives are dominant.There is a certain semantic relationship between A and B.In "ban A ban B" construction,A and B have four kinds of semantic relations: synonym pairs,gradable antonym pairs,complementary antonym pairs or related words which belong to the same category.However,in "ban A bu B" construction,A and B only show three kinds of semantic relations: synonym pairs,gradable antonym pairs and complementary antonym pairs.The whole construction still has lexical function and can act as an independent component in a sentence.(2)According to the different semantic relations between A and B,"ban A ban B" presents four kinds of constructional meanings,while "ban A bu B" owns three types of constructional meanings,among which semantic fuzziness and negative tendencies account for a large proportion.(3)Both "ban A ban B" and "ban A bu B" constructions have fuzziness and negative tendency in the aspect of pragmatics.The semantic fuzziness of these two constructions is influenced by the fuzziness of category boundary and the complexity of categorization in the cognitive process.In addition,the negative tendency conveyed by the two constructions originates from the speaker's psychological expectation for a particular scene.Because the objective scene does not meet the ideal result presupposed by the speaker,the constructions convey the subjective negative tendency and dissatisfaction.To sum up,first of all,this thesis provides a new perspective for the study of Chinese four-character patterns.In addition,the cognitive motivations for semantic fuzziness and negative tendency of "ban A ban B" and "ban A bu B" constructions are discussed in depth within the framework of construction grammar,which aims to help Chinese enthusiasts better understand the Chinese four-character pattern and at the same time to better serve the machine translation of the four-character pattern.