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Approaching The Double‐Nominal Construction In Mandarin Chinese Through The Semantic‐Cognitive Interaction
Author(s) -
Sun Kun
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
studia linguistica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.187
H-Index - 28
eISSN - 1467-9582
pISSN - 0039-3193
DOI - 10.1111/stul.12085
Subject(s) - computer science , transposition (logic) , mandarin chinese , verb , predicate (mathematical logic) , phrase , sentence , word order , event structure , event (particle physics) , natural language processing , artificial intelligence , linguistics , arithmetic , mathematics , programming language , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics
The double‐nominal construction ( DNC ), also called ‘topic construction’, is a common occurrence in Chinese and other East Asian languages. It is characterized by two initial NP s which appear before the predicate verb. The construction has mostly been analyzed using the syntactic angle singly approach. The topic (the initial nominal phrase, abbreviated as NP 1) needs to syntactically establish some connection with the comment (the rest of the construction) but this has, unfortunately, not been the case due to numerous counterexamples. This construction is so complex that other factors have to be taken into account. This paper addresses the major concern about the problem of the two Initial NP s’ transposition in various DNC s, an area that does not appear to have previously been sufficiently explored. Compared with other languages, the transposition of two initial NP s in DNC is unique to Chinese. The transposition with two initial NP s in each type of DNC performs quite differently, so we should make finer classification for DNC reasonably. In order to propose reasonable classification of DNC , we need to clarify the relationship between NP 1 and the rest of the construction. Meanwhile, in order to tackle the problem of the two NP s’ transposition in a special type of DNC called dangling topic construction, we propose a more reasonable and precise interpretation of the relationship between topic and comment in this construction using the event‐based model and the event integration. This study shows how, depending on the syntactic‐semantic behavior of NP 1, Chinese DNC s can be classified into three types. Finally, based on the three types of DNC proposed, a semantic‐cognitive interaction helps to explain and resolve the problem of NP s’ transposition for each type. This study, therefore, provides a unified and more developed account of Chinese DNC . Consequently, a semantic‐cognitive approach is likely to shed more light on the notion of topic construction and help understand how Chinese native speakers comprehend its structure and construct the meaning.