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The Investigation of the Chinese Construction "Yi+C+N’ Based on BR

Author: SongYaZhi
Tutor: WangYin
School: Sichuan International Studies University
Course: English Language and Literature
Keywords: “yi+ (C) + N” boundarization reboundarzation CN matching the omission of C
CLC: H146
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2010
Downloads: 46
Quote: 1
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Abstract

Generally speaking, the C (namely“classifier”) in the Chinese construction“yi+ (C) + N (noun)”is named as“名量词”(noun-classifier word class, NCW for short). Many scholars have made an investigation in it in some respects, but a monographic cognitive research into the whole construction is quite rare. Li Yan (2006) investigates the cognitive functions and generative mechanism of NCW from the perspective of metaphor and metonymy, which is mainly confined to temporary C. Xue Xiujuan (2006) accounts for it in a similar way, namely metaphor, metonymy and image-schema. No thematic discusstion is found on the two matters: (1) the motivation that C in the construction can or can not be omitted; (2) the mechanism to make C and N match up with one another. This thesis proposes reboundarization based on the“Bounded Theory”by Langacker (1987), and establishes Boundarization-Reboundarizarion Model (BR for short) to provide a motivation for the first topic; then we will combine BR, metaphor and metonymy to propose three cognitive functions (namely BR cognition, salience cognition and similarity cognition) as a mechanism for CN matching, which naturally form three matching patterns of C and N.Besides, we design an access condition, namely“一+<3+/n”(means that it can only admit the situation in which the collected data should contain“一”and a noun with less than three charactors between the two, so the data contain the variant of“yi+ N”), to exhaustively collect 36,973 data and randomly select 3,142 (selecting 15% of the total data and excluding all the fragmentary items )of the construction from the National Language Committee Corpus to make a quantitative analysis centered on the two topics for the qualitative analysis.1. Main contribution: We have established“Boundarization - Reboundarization Theory”, which explores the idea by Langacker, and will be used as a theoretical basis for the Chinese construction“yi+ (C) + N”in order to bridge the two main gaps: (1) The motivation that C can be omitted: when C performs the cognitive function of B or R, it cannot be omitted, otherwise it can.(2) The mechanism of CN matching: on the basis of the three cognitive funtions of C, i.e. BRC, SaC and SC, CN matching can be divided into three patterns: BRM, SaM and SM.2. After data analyses and statistics, we mainly find: (Notice: The“Variant of‘yi+ N’”should be excluded in calculating“Proportion”, because it does not involve the matching of CN.)(1) The omissible constructs (including the“yi+ N”variant, like“一牛”) account for 69.06%, which illustrates that the majority of C in“yi+ (C) + N”can be omitted. If“yi+ N”variant (there are 961 such constructs) is excluded, the complete“yi+ C + N”constructs are 2,181, in which 1,200 belong to SaM, accounting for 55.02%. It indicates that the main cognitive function of C is SaC, which exceeds its most basic cognitive function, i.e. BRC (cf. 4.1.1.2) with the rate of 44.57%.(2) The constructs of C functioning as R outnumber those C as B, that is, 523:449, which suggests that R is more prevalently existent at least in this construction than B in our cognitive activity.

The Investigation of the Chinese Construction "Yi+C+N’ Based on BR

Abstract

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