A Construction Grammar Approach To The X ɡuī X Construction In Modern Chinese

The Chinese expression X ɡuī X is widely used in oral communication,so it attracted the attention of many scholars,but the previous studies only give a preliminary description on the characteristics of the construction X ɡuī X from syntactic,semantic and pragmatic levels,thus few scholars conducted a systematic study of the mechanisms and motivations of the construction from the perspective of Construction Grammar.Thus,the author will conduct a more comprehensive and systematic analysis of this construction based on Goldberg’s Construction Grammar.Therefore,this study will attempt to answer the following questions:(1)What are the syntactic,semantic and pragmatic characteristics of the construction X ɡuī X?(2)What are the restrictions on the variable X in construction X ɡuī X?(3)What are the mechanisms and motivations of the construction X ɡuī X?According to the above questions,the author collected and sorted out the relevant materials from the CCL and BCC corpus,after deleting the erroneous examples like:bǎzhèɡèfánɡjiānɡuīshiɡuīshi(把这个房间归拾归拾)and many duplicate examples,altogether there are 844 examples can be used in the research.This study not only describes its linguistic characteristics,but also explains the mechanisms and motivations of the construction XɡuīX in detail based on the careful analysis of related materials.In response to the above questions,this article gives the following conclusion:Firstly,from the syntactic point of view,the construction X ɡuī X has three manifestations,namely monomial,binomial and polynomial,although they are similar in structure,but their semantic characteristics are slightly different.When the construction X ɡuī X is used alone,it forms an adversative relationship with subsequent sentence.When this construction is used in series,that is X ɡuī X,Y ɡuī Y,there are two situations of the semantics between X and Y,namely opposition and non-opposition.However,binomial can stand alone as a full sentence,or followed by another sentence to indicate adversative meaning;Polynomials are used to represent enumerations,and the number of listed items depends on the needs of the speaker.From a pragmatic point of view,this construction has a strong subjectivity,besides,the content of variable “X” generally appears in previous text,so the application of the construction can make the passage more coherent.Secondly,the construction X ɡuī X has no restrictions on the choice of nouns and adjectives,but as for verbs,such as can-wish verbs,imperative verbs,directional verbs,judgment verbs,and dummy verbs are difficult to enter this construction.Thirdly,from the perspective of the generation mechanisms,the appearance of peripheral members in the examples of the construction X ɡuī X can be explained by construction coercion.In addition,the construction can be widely used in spoken and written language is inseparable from the role of the analogy mechanism.As for the motivations,through the observation of the materials,it is found that monosyllable and disyllable of the variable “X” account for a high proportion,which is driven by the Economic Principle of Language,thus the expression can achieve the greatest communicative effect in the most concise form;In addition,one of the features of this construction is that the speaker may first affirm other’s point of view and then express his or her own suggestion,evaluation,dissatisfaction and so on,which reflects the Politeness Principle in communication,so it can avoid the conflict between the speaker and listener,and facilitate communication;Finally,the content of variable “X” in the construction X ɡuī X is shared information for the speaker and listener,which is also called the “background”,and the content followed by it is the information that the speaker wants to convey,that is,the foreground.Therefore,the use of this construction follows the law of transmitting information in daily conversation.