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What distinguish synonymous constructions: A corpusbased study of Mandarin liandou and lianye constr

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Title: What distinguish synonymous constructions: A corpusbased study of Mandarin liandou and lianye constr


1
What distinguish synonymous constructions? A
corpus-based study of Mandarin liandou and
lianye constructions
  • Chueh-chen Wang
  • Graduate Institute of Linguistics
  • National Taiwan University
  • Oct 5, 2006

2
Acknowledgement
  • National Science Council, Republic of China
    (NSC94-2411-H-002-012)
  • Prof. I-wen Su and all my group members of the
    NTU Cognitive Pragmatics Lab
  • Prof. Lillian M. Huang and her students of the
    Introduction to Linguistic Analysis course

3
Introduction
  • The aspiration of the constructionist approaches
  • The question posed by synonymous constructions
    (Stubbs 2001 36-39)

4
Mandarin liandou and lianye Even
  • Are these two linguistic patterns synonymous? Are
    they really constructions?
  • Yes to both questions
  • Strong intuition among native speakers and
    researchers
  • Support from corpus data

5
Literature review (1)
  • Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics
  • Li 1947 38-39 Hu 1962 281 Chao 1968 766
    Wang 1971a 256, 1971b 229 Lu 1980 325 Li and
    Thompson 1981 338 Zhu 1982 190-191 Wang 1987
    271-272 Lu 1992 338-339 Zhao 1992 43-44 Chu
    and Ji 1999 64 Li 2005 109-110 et passim

6
Literature review (2)
  • Pragmatic function (e.g. Shyu 2001 Paul 2002)
    focalization
  • Undifferentiated in previous studies
    liandou/ye, glossed identically
  • Interchangeable (Tsao 1979 232 Li and Thompson
    1981 338 Zhu 1982 191 Cui 1993 124 Hole
    2004 183 Ye 2004 48 Cao 2005 20)

7
Principle of No Synonym of Grammatical Forms
  • Givón 1985 Kirsner 1985 Langacker 1985 Clark
    1987 Wierzbicka 1988 et passim
  • A difference in syntactic form always spells a
    difference in meaning (Goldberg 1995 3)
  • CxGs constructional network (Croft and Cruse
    2004)

8
Research questions
  • Are liandou and lianye undifferentiated and
    interchangeable?
  • If not, how are they distinguished in language
    use?

9
Theoretical assumptions
  • The constructionist approaches the notion of
    construction as the fundamental unit of
    grammatical representation (Fillmore et al. 1988
    Goldberg 1995 4 Croft 2001 17-19 Goldberg
    2003 219)
  • The usage-based model frequency and lexical
    storage (Bybee 1995, 2001 Bybee and Scheibman
    1999 Barlow and Kemmer 2000)

10
Methodology
  • Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Modern Chinese
    (ver 4.0)http//www.sinica.edu.tw/SinicaCorpus/
  • Search for lian as a connective 1191 tokens
  • Manually tag the components between lian and
    dou/ye with syntactic categories

11
Evidence for constructional status (1)
  • Native speakers and researchers intuition
  • More tangible proof usage-based model
  • Filter 1191 lian tokens for collocation with dou
    and/or ye
  • 1076 in total (90.34)

12
Evidence for constructional status (2)
  • Further proofSyntactic properties are not
    predictable from its components
  • Statistically minority in a primarily SVO
    language (Sun and Givón 1994 164 Huang and Chui
    1997 57)

13
Internal structure (1)
  • Components of lian X dou Y and lian X ye Y
    X -gt focalized elementY -gt whatever follows
    dou/ye
  • Focalized element (X)
  • 1) transitive subject (A) e.g. (1)
  • 2) transitive object (O) e.g. (2)
  • 3) intransitive subject (S) e.g. (3)
  • 4) bare verb (V) e.g. (4)
  • 5) clause (C) e.g. (5), (6), (7)

14
Internal structure (2)
  • Whatever follows dou/ye (Y)
  • mainly a verbal/shi predicate, occasionally
    with a PP

15
Split preference in focalization (1)
16
Split preference in focalization (2)
  • lian X dou Y focalize Olian X ye Y
    focalize S
  • Further proofpreverbal objects in Mandarin are
    atypical and carry emphatic functions (Light
    1979 Tang 1988 171 Sun and Givón 1994 164
    Huang and Chui 1997 57)
  • Serve different communicative needs

17
Explaining the split preference (1)
  • Dou all universal quantification and
    distributivity (Hou 1979 Lee 1986 Y.-H. Li
    1992 F.-H. Liu 1990 Cheng 1995 J. Li 1995)
  • Tendency to a plural nominal due to its
    distributive nature (F.-H. Liu 1990 Jiang 1998
    Fang and Fan 2002 Zhang 2002)

18
Explaining the split preference (2)
  • Ye also association/resemblance
  • Tendency to introduce single referents
  • Du Bois (1987, 2003a, 2003b)A gt old
    informationO gt locus of new informationS gt
    primarily old information, though compatible with
    new information
  • -gt explains why A doesnt figure prominently
    in either construction

19
Explaining the split preference (3)
  • Old information mostly involve singular
    referents, whereas new information is more likely
    to involve plural referents
  • -gt explains the split preference!

20
Topic-comment structure
  • Y is obligatorily a verbal predicate, even when X
    is V, e.g. (4), (5), (6)
  • Further proofRepetition of anaphora, e.g. (8),
    (9)
  • Supports Tsao (1994)

21
Constructional configuration
  • Topic-comment structure suggests a structural
    boundary
  • lian X dou Y lian X ye Y
  • ?
    ?lian X dou Y lian X ye Y
  • ? ?
  • lian X dou Y lian X ye Y

22
Challenges for the constructionist approaches
  • X as NP?? Y as VP??
  • Topic-comment structure
  • Split preference distinguishing both
    constructions gradient, not constant
  • -gt Preferred Argument Structure (Du Bois
    2003a)

23
Suggested solutions
  • Indeterminate constructionsunderspecified
    components filled in by discourse-pragmatics
  • Recognize gradient properties in constructions
    (but how to formalize??)

24
Conclusion
  • Split preference in focalization between lian X
    dou Y and lian X ye Y
  • Discourse profiles of synonymous constructions
  • Challenges to the constructionist approaches and
    suggested solutions

25
Questions??
26
Reference (1)
  • Barlow, Michael, and Suzanne Kemmer (eds). 2000.
    Usage-based Models of Language. Stanford Center
    for the Study of Language and Information.
  • Bybee, Joan L. 1995. Regular morphology and the
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    425-455.
  • Bybee, Joan L. 2001. Phonology and Language Use.
    Cambridge Cambridge University Press.
  • Bybee, Joan L., and Joanne Scheibman. 1999. The
    effect of usage on degree of consitutency the
    reduction of dont in American English.
    Linguistics 37 575-596.

27
Reference (2)
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28
Reference (3)
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29
Reference (4)
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30
Reference (5)
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31
Reference (6)
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32
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