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From Minimal Contrast to Meaning ConstructLexical Semantics of Mandarin Carry and Hold Verbs: A Frame-Based Constructional Analysis of ná 拿 and wò 握

From Minimal Contrast to Meaning Construct: Lexical Semantics of Mandarin Carry and Hold Verbs: A... [This study aims to identify the lexical semantic distinctions of Mandarin carry and hold verbs by comparing their syntactic and semantic behaviors from a frame-based constructional approach. The two commonly used verbs ná 拿 and wò 握 are intensively examined in terms of their collocational distributions in BCC. It is found that ná 拿 behaves like caused motion verbs ‘carry’ as it is more likely to co-occur with directional markers. Whereas, wò 握 behaves more like hold verbs, which tends to collocate with static-durative markers. This shows that although both verbs pertain to hand movement, ná 拿 is lexicalized with a purpose of moving, while wò 握 typically denote ‘prolonged contact’. This study is significant in providing a pilot study of the two verbs representing two basic semantic frames with clearly defined semantic-to-syntactic distinctions, and the findings are feasible to the construction of Mandarin VerbNet.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

From Minimal Contrast to Meaning ConstructLexical Semantics of Mandarin Carry and Hold Verbs: A Frame-Based Constructional Analysis of ná 拿 and wò 握

Part of the Frontiers in Chinese Linguistics Book Series (volume 9)
Editors: Su, Qi; Zhan, Weidong
He, Tianqi; Liu, Meichun; He, Hongfeng
From Minimal Contrast to Meaning Construct — Sep 26, 2019
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References (17)

Publisher
Springer Nature Singapore
Copyright
© Peking University Press 2020
ISBN
978-981-32-9239-0
Pages
39 –50
DOI
10.1007/978-981-32-9240-6_3
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[This study aims to identify the lexical semantic distinctions of Mandarin carry and hold verbs by comparing their syntactic and semantic behaviors from a frame-based constructional approach. The two commonly used verbs ná 拿 and wò 握 are intensively examined in terms of their collocational distributions in BCC. It is found that ná 拿 behaves like caused motion verbs ‘carry’ as it is more likely to co-occur with directional markers. Whereas, wò 握 behaves more like hold verbs, which tends to collocate with static-durative markers. This shows that although both verbs pertain to hand movement, ná 拿 is lexicalized with a purpose of moving, while wò 握 typically denote ‘prolonged contact’. This study is significant in providing a pilot study of the two verbs representing two basic semantic frames with clearly defined semantic-to-syntactic distinctions, and the findings are feasible to the construction of Mandarin VerbNet.]

Published: Sep 26, 2019

Keywords: Frame-based constructional approach; Collocational distributions; Corpus-based; Hold; Carry

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