Research on the distribution of parts of speech has found that the proportion of nouns in different languages is relatively stable at approximately 37
The diverse grading glossaries utilized in international Chinese Education provide the "form" and "pronunciation" of words, with limited entries also indicating their "part of speech". However, in actual teaching practice, students primarily focus on learning the "meaning" of these words. This paper delves into the meanings of elementary level monosyllabic nouns, verbs, and adjectives in the Chinese Proficiency Grading Standards for International Chinese Language Education, aiming to identify those meanings that constitute the fundamental "word meaning" of these terms. Firstly, the "form" and "pronunciation" of the monosyllabic words under examination are carefully selected from the elementary glossaries outlined in the Chinese Proficiency Grading Standards for International Chinese Language Education. Secondly, the interpretations of these "forms" and "pronunciations" in six different sets of international Chinese elementary comprehensive textbooks are annotated with the corresponding meanings of Chinese characters as referenced in the Modern Chinese Dictionary (7th Edition). Finally, this paper introduces an ordering model that sequences "elementary teaching meanings" based on commonality and difficulty. This research can facilitate various applications, including textbook compilation and the realm of international Chinese education, text grading through meaning analysis, and decision-making regarding the significance of meanings in compiling dictionaries tailored for foreign learners of Chinese.
A contrastive collostructional analysis of “X + shuāng + N” and “X + pair of + N” offers insight into the differences between Chinese and English languages in constructing collective classifier constructions. The study, grounded in construction grammar and employing collostructional analysis, conducts a contrastive analysis of the two constructions. The findings reveal that: 1) there are more differences than similarities in collostructional nouns associated with “X + shuāng + N” and “X + pair of + N”; 2) the two constructions exhibit distinct collostructional categorization mechanisms; and 3) the prototypical meaning of “X + shuāng + N” is to measure binary and homogeneous body parts or objects related to the body, while “X + pair of + N” typically measures both binary and homogeneous body-related and non-body-related objects. Variations in etymological features, cognitive patterns, and grammatical roles account for the collostructional differences between these two constructions. Based on these contrastive findings, this paper suggests improvements to the definition of the classifier “shuāng” in Chinese-English learner’s dictionaries.
Through the statistics of 10 national standards, it is found that the selection of semantic features based on the semantic structure of the object. The terminology formation in Chinese industry takes semantic structure of terms as the meaningful material. In the selection of lexical morphemes, there are two situations where lexical morphemes directly and indirectly reflect the internal form. However, the terminology formation in Chinese industry all follows the semantic logic rules of "Principle of Identity" as well as the mechanisms of "Naming by Attribute" and "Focus Selection". This study reveals the semantic logic mechanism of terminology formation in Chinese industry and explores its semantic tendency. It is found that most lexical morphemes are selected based on the categories of [STATE][STRUCTURE][FUNCTION] and [GENUS]. It hopes to improve the rational level and scientific design of teaching methods of vocabulary in teaching Chinese as a foreign language. It also hopes to provide academic references for the standardization and internationalization of Chinese industry terminology.
In the Chinese lexical system, idioms constitute a crucial component. The study of idioms is extensive and longstanding, yet it often adheres to conventional perspectives, lacking in substantive innovation. This paper focuses on the application of the "Spreading-Activation Theory Model in the Understanding of Metaphorical and Metonymic Idioms in Chinese". Firstly, it clarifies the application and analysis of cognitive metaphor models in current idiom research, emphasizing three features of the source domain within idioms: (1) the relationship between the source and target domains, (2) the number of source domains within idioms, and (3) the inherent characteristics of the source domain. Drawing upon the Spreading-Activation Model, this study breaks free from existing theoretical frameworks, explores novel perspectives, and establishes a new classification system for metaphorical and metonymic idioms in Chinese. These idioms are classified into four categories: (1) Directional activation Idioms, (2) Cooperative activation Idioms, (3) Spreading activation Idioms, and (4) Superimposed activation Idioms. Through theoretical analysis, it derives a continuum of cognitive difficulty for these four idiom categories. This classification system broadens our understanding of idioms within ontological research, expands the typology of the Spreading-Activation Theory, and simultaneously contributes to idiom translation and teaching research.
This paper examines 77,845 single-item adjective attributives from articles in "People's Daily" from 2019 to 2021. Distribution characteristics, syllable combination patterns of adhesive attributives and combined attributives, and occurrence and absence tendency of "de" are studied from the practical perspective. We find the number of adhesive attributives is significantly less than that of combined attributives, while the frequency of use of the former is 4 - 5 times higher than that of the latter. In the two attributive structures, adjectives and nouns have high proportion of repeated usage, but the proportion of their co-occurrence is relatively small. Besides, occurrence and absence of "de" in attributive structures have the characteristic of "polarization", that is for the vast majority of word instances there is a strong tendency to either use "de" or not. Presence of "de" has the function of distinguishing meaning and highlighting information while the absence of "de" can make the meaning more concise and further solidify the sentence structure. This paper provides a basis and reference for the lexical semantic research of adjective attributive structure.
This study investigated the mapping directionality of Mandarin synaesthesia, based on a self-paced reading task. We have found that Mandarin synaesthesia also shows mapping directionalities in the language comprehension among native Mandarin Chinese speakers. However, the results of the self-paced reading task do not support the direction of Mandarin synaesthetic mapping from vision to smell found in previous corpus studies. As the reading task makes up for the limited quantity of olfactory words in human languages, synaesthetic mapping directions attested in this study would be the most likely to reflect the actual pattern of Mandarin synaesthesia. In addition, the self-paced reading task demonstrates different characteristics among the linguistic expressions without synaesthetic usages, the expressions following synaesthetic mapping directions, and the expressions incongruent with synaesthetic mapping directions in the reading process. These patterns provide evidence for linguistic synaesthesia as an independent cognitive mechanism, which furthers our understanding of linguistic synaesthesia and metaphor.
This study aims to examine the causative factors which lead to non-parallelism in the derivation process of disyllabic words with the same basic meaning in modern Chinese by comparing the morpheme meanings and the word formations. It is revealed that although lexical derivation occurs in the hierarchy of words, it is still mainly restricted by morphemes, especially the meanings of morphemes. Besides, relations between words, pragmatic contexts and foreign languages influence the derivation as well. Chronologically, synonymous derivative meanings are in a long-term transformation from parallel to non-parallel, which shows the tendency of lexicon evolution.
Different languages often employ distinct strategies to encode the same concept, leading to variations in lexicalization patterns based on which semantic elements are combined. The semantic elements of “lāchě” verbs include actions, tools, directions, manners and degrees. Chinese and English display different lexicalization strategies for expressing the concept of “pulling”. This paper focuses on verbs that convey the meaning of “pulling” in both Chinese and English, using “semantic component patterns” as the analytical framework. By referencing dictionary definitions, examining language use in context, refining definitions, and identifying semantic elements, this study compares the semantic components and lexicalization patterns between the two languages. It further investigates the similarities and differences in word meanings and lexicalization strategies within verb clusters that express the same semantic field in both languages.
Crops that were initially introduced as foreign vegetables, such as corn, sweet potato, and potato, have diverse word forms in Sinitic languages. This paper, based on large-scale data, investigates the spatio-temporal distribution of the modifying morphemes in the compound nouns of such crops, including (sic) hu 'foreign', (sic) fan 'foreign', (sic)yang 'oceanic, foreign', (sic)xi 'Western', (sic) hai 'oceanic', Helan 'Holland', and (sic) Wo 'Japan'. These morphemes share one prominent geographical pattern: they take as a core the region where the crop was first introduced. While some show multidirectional distribution, e.g., the. fan 'foreign' category, some show unidirectional distribution, e.g., the. yang 'oceanic, foreign' category. Diachronically, (sic) hu 'foreign' and (sic) fan 'foreign' precede. yang 'oceanic, foreign' and (sic) xi 'Western'. Such spatio-temporal distribution can be accounted for by semantic change, sociocultural development, geomorphological environment, and the history of intercultural communication.
Based on Charles Fillmore's Frame Semantics Theory, we summarize and categorize a series of paraphrasing models for mental verbs. By comparing two outward-oriented Chinese learner's dictionaries, Commercial Press Learner's Chinese Dictionary and Contemporary Chinese Learner's Dictionary, with the inward-oriented Modern Chinese Dictionary (7th edition), we propose the following suggestions for paraphrasing mental verbs: (1) Placing verbs within a "scenario" for paraphrasing aligns with the cognitive characteristics of second language learners; (2) Accurately and comprehensively reflecting frame elements which differentiate meanings can enhance the precision of paraphrasing; (3) Using the most frequent syntactic representations as references for syntactic realizations in paraphrasing helps learners in both understanding the meanings and mastering the usages of the words; (4) The quantity and quality of frame elements can be used as criteria to evaluate the quality of dictionary paraphrasing.
This paper explores the lexical-pragmatic changes of gratitude verb constructions on social media platforms. Gratitude constructions display a wide range of formal innovations on social media platforms, encompassing both novel lexical and phrasal constructions. These constructions have become highly conventionalized and are now used as fixed idioms. Two kinds of pragmatic changes are observed: positive and negative implicatures. The former category conveys positive emotions such as appreciation, delight, and teasing, which are mainly motivated by the causal chain of thanking events. The latter subtype denotes negative feelings like speechlessness, unhappiness, and anger, which are motivated by the pragmatic shift of xie-xie (sic) 'thanks' in daily communication and reinforced by the online keyword censorship. Driven by the context collapse in social media, the pragmatic functions of gratitude constructions have shifted from positive to negative. This paper aims to shed light on lexical-pragmatic studies and Internet language changes.
Starting from the network nature of the Chinese vocabulary system, we can construct various vocabulary networks. Teaching through the activation relationships between each node can help students restructure their mental lexicon and master more vocabulary within the same class time. The network-based construction teaching of Chinese psychological lexicon for international students based on the perspective of systems theory, represents an optimized teaching model within the existing curriculum framework. This approach emphasizes the increase of the proportion of vocabulary teaching in Chinese language classes. By integrating vocabulary network construction closely with skilled-based course teaching through centralized vocabulary instruction, it seamlessly blends into various stages of classroom introduction, lectures, practice, review, and assessment.
This paper uses a refined behavior profile approach to explore a set of morphologically related Chinese near-synonyms. Most behavior profile studies in lexical semantics rely on manual annotation. We illustrate a modified approach with automatic annotation in a case study differentiating seven Chinese happiness-denoting near-synonyms. Four types of sentential features are analyzed: collocational features, syntactic features, dependency relations, and semantic frames of the logic predicates. Fifty-five contextual variables were annotated automatically by identifying the top n-grams and the results of part-of-speech tagging, dependency parsing, and named-entity recognition. The results show that the seven near-synonyms fall into four clusters of linguistic resemblance, fine-tuning previous research findings in line with linguistic theories. Methodologically, this study modifies the behavioral profile approach by introducing systematic rule-based annotation, position-based collocation variables, and a co-occurrence table of relative frequency and dimension reduction techniques in a less labor-intensive and time-consuming manner that is empirically and applicationally feasible.
This paper examines the interaction of semantics, grammatical class, and prosody in Chinese [X+PLACE] compounds, specifically from the perspective of Qualia Structure. It focuses on construction tendencies between constituents of [X+PLACE] compounds and explores the underlying cognitive motivations. The findings reveal that the construction tendency of the internal semantics in [X+PLACE] compounds is as follows: [FORMAL+PLACE] > [TELIC+PLACE] > [AGENTIVE+PLACE] > [CONSTITUTIVE+PLACE] > [HANDLE+PLACE]. In terms of grammatical class, the tendency is NN > VN > AN. Furthermore, the prosodic models demonstrate a construction tendency of [1+1] > [2+1] > [1+2]. Due to principles of formal economy and semantic accuracy, the grammatical class and prosodic models of [X+PLACE] compounds exhibit different construction tendencies from the perspective of qualia models. Moreover, the natural or artificial attributes of PLACE significantly influence compound construction: head constituents of artificial places tend to form [TELIC+PLACE], while those of natural places tend to form [FORMAL+PLACE].
Current discussions on the mechanism of the omission of locative words are limited by the nature of the noun head, failing to explain the omission of spatial words governed by the same type of noun head in different sentence patterns and address the underlying motivation for spatial words causing nouns to become locative. This paper used Distinctive Collexeme Analysis to examine the semantic distributions of the synonymous motion constructions “N1 + Vjìn + N2” and “N1 + Vjìn + N2 + lǐ”. Based on their spatial roles, verbs were divided into two categories: Vspatial relation and Vspatial region. The study showed that Vspatial relation tended to co-occur with “N1 + Vjìn + N2”; Vspatial region tended to co-occur with “N1 + Vjìn + N2 + lǐ”. Thus, this paper constructed the interaction continuum of verb spatial roles and noun semantic roles, pointing out that the omission of lǐ is the interaction between verbs’ spatial role and the location, with the cognitive motivation being the schema transformation mechanism of lǐ.
This paper examines intransitive resultatives with objects in Chinese, focusing on three typical expressions such as ‘hēzuì jiǔ,’ ‘chībǎo fàn,’ and ‘shuìxǐng jiào.’ Contrary to the traditional views that intransitive resultatives do not take objects, empirical data from the corpus reveal varied frequencies of object candidates, suggesting that these constructions can co-occur with objects under specific conditions. The paper describes the syntactic and semantic features of these constructions and suggests that the objects in question may not function as typical objects but rather as idiomatic ones involving different degrees in lexicalization. We believe that the causative relation between the events is the core factor in the process of event integration. And thus, a lexicalization continuum is proposed to capture the degree of the lexicalized process of these intransitive resultatives with objects. This continuum provides a unified model to illustrate the variations between lexical semantics and syntactic configurations.
When expressing motion events in modern Chinese, both V-guolai (sic) and V-shanglai (sic) can represent the movement of approaching, such as zhui guolai (sic) and zhui guolai (sic) 'catch up'. However, in certain cases, they cannot be interchanged, such as jia guolai (sic) and *jia shanglai (sic) 'marry up', ban guolai (sic) and ban shanglai (sic) 'move up'. This study compares V-guolai and V-shanglai from three perspectives: semantic composition, features of verbs and objects using corpus analysis based language component substitution and semantic analysis. The findings are as follows: First, the main semantic difference affects event outcome and semantic focus. In terms of the event outcome, V-guolai emphasis the action process, while V-shanglai focuses on the action result. In terms of the semantic focus, V-guolai focuses on lai and V-shanglai focuses on shang, the semantic focus is not symmetric. Secondly, when they are used as the complements, whether guolai and shanglai can be interchangeable depends on the semantic features of their corresponding main verbs. Finally, when a nominal object N is inserted to the sentence structure, it generally serves as the figure for the sentences like V-guo-N-lai, whereas for sentences like V-shang-N-lai, N can either be the figure or the ground. In phrases such as V-guolai/shanglai-N, N is generally used as a figure.
Through the research on the conceptual materialization of the Chinese psychological noun “Memory (Jìyì)”, we find that, when describing “Memory (Jìyì)” in Chinese, there is a basic cognitive tendency, to recognize them as a specific and tangible thing that can be perceived by people's perceptual organs, which is a common cognitive ability of human beings, the ability to materialize concepts. And this cognitive tendency of conceptual materialization is carried out under a basic cognitive strategy: either “Memory (Jìyì)” is recognized as a space-like thing or as an entity-like thing, which we call spatialization and substantialization. This differences in cognitive strategies for “Memory (Jìyì)” will lead to obvious and complementary differences in Chinese lexical and syntactic expressions. This phenomenon is not only common in Chinese psychological nouns, but also exists in English psychological nouns. We believe that the research on the conceptual reification of Chinese psychological nouns has important research value for expanding our cognition of the abstract concepts of psychological categories.
This paper examines polarity shift in the " (sic) bu 'not' + adj./verb" construction in Chinese. Through quantitative analysis, we demonstrate the widespread occurrence of this phenomenon. By categorizing and analyzing gradable adjectives and psychological verbs, we identify four key conditions for polarity shift within this construction: (1) the adjective or verb belongs to a pair of words with opposing polarities ("adj. - similar to adj."/"verb - similar to verb"); (2) the meaning of " (sic) bu 'not' + adj./verb" is equivalent to its antonymic counterpart, "similar to adj."/"similar to verb"; (3) the adjective or verb exhibits subjective emotional bias; and (4) an intermediate zone exists between "adj."/"verb" and "similar to adj."/"similar to verb". We conclude by discussing potential explanations for this phenomenon, including challenges in applying degree semantics to account for polarity shift.
