A Cognitive Study Of The “X Jing” Construction In Modern Chinese

In recent years,network buzzwords like“xi jing”(戏精),“gang jing”(杠精)and“ningmeng jing”(柠檬精)are widely employed in people’s daily life.Gradually the combinatory use of“X jing”appears more and more frequently in people’s life.Most previous research on this issue regards“X jing”structure as a quasi-affix and analyzes its phonological,syntactic and semantic features.According to Goldberg’s Construction Grammar,construction is a pairing of form and meaning and any linguistic pattern can be recognized as a construction as long as some aspects of its form or meaning are not strictly predictable from its component parts or from other existing constructions.Chinese buzzword“X jing”thus can be regarded as a construction.Therefore,Construction Grammar could provide a brand new perspective on exploring the features of this construction and investigating the mechanisms and motivations for its generation and popularity.In the present study,the following questions will be answered:(1)What are the conditions for words to enter the “X” slot in the “X jing” construction?(2)What are the syntactic,semantic and pragmatic features of this construction?(3)What are the mechanisms and motivations for this construction? The main findings are as follows.Firstly,construction is of great productivity,but it must be restricted in a certain range.The author discovers that the variable “X” in the “X jing” construction mainly appears as monosyllabic or disyllabic words,with a small number of trisyllables.The“X” slot can be added mainly by nouns,verbs and adjectives.Function words and other notional words like adverbs,numerals and pronouns cannot be put into the “X jing”construction.Semantically words entering “X” slot can be classified into three types,namely,animate or inanimate things with distinctive attributes similar to human beings,things or concepts describing human beings themselves,as well as the emerging buzzwords.In other words,only the things closely related to human beings’ daily life can be filled into the “X jing” construction.Secondly,with regard to features of the “X jing” construction,semantically it can refer to animals that behave like human beings,animals or plants in strange shape or size,people with distinctive attributes similar to“X”,people who are keen on or know a lot about “X”,people who are good at something related to “X” as well as people with typical physical features.The present study has found that its constructional meaning is that the referent has a certain distinctive attribute of “X” or does something related to “X”,usually to a great degree,or with a high frequency.As for the syntactic features of this construction,mostly its derivative expressions are nouns or adjectives,and they can function as the subject,object,attribute,adverbial and predicate in a sentence.On the pragmatic level,the “X jing” construction can express the speaker’s different attitudinal preferences which are influenced by its constituent components,especially the variable “X”,and specific contexts.Owing to its effective expressive value,this construction is frequently applied in social media.Thirdly,the present research further explores the hidden mechanisms and motivations for its generation and popularity.The generation of the “X jing”construction is the synthetical result of construction coercion,conceptual metaphor and metonymy,as well as the mechanism of analogization.Furthermore,there are some profound motivations behind the popularity of the “X jing” construction,such as social development,language users’ psychology and the principle of economy.The present study takes “X jing” as the research object and investigates its features,mechanisms and motivations systematically and comprehensively,which is of great significance.To start with,from the perspective of Construction Grammar,it can clarify what kind of words can enter this construction and avoid the disadvantages of the previous studies which may discuss part of features limitedly.In addition,it can enrich the study of Chinese buzzwords,and demonstrate the applicability of Construction Grammar in the study of Chinese construction.