On Embedding Structure Of Chinese

The notion"embedding structure"indicates a kind of phrasal structure in Chinese in which two fixed characters are separated by two flexible characters. While the fixed part suggests the particular construction and particular pragmatic function, language subjects might insert with great freedom the flexible part in between to express a variety of meanings and feelings. Thus the structure is highly productive and practical, leading to a considerable number of new Chinese four-character phrases such as"东…西….","大…大…","一…一…","忽…忽…","头…脑…","…来…去". According to its formal features, this structure falls into two categories, namely"A…B/A…"and"…A…B". This dissertation is composed of five parts.Chapter One defines first the range of subjects investigated, which include not only the embedding structures collected in"Modern Chinese Dictionary"(the 5th edition) and"Dictionary of Chinese Four-Character Phrases"compiled by Jiang De Wu in 2000 , but also the"quasi-set phrases"(pages 270-272) in"Newly Edited Modern Chinese Language"by Zhang Bin in 2002. The phrases researched upon total up to 240. We might be benefited from this research in the following five aspects: deepening our understanding of Chinese language; helping with language teaching, especially teaching Chinese as a foreign language; improving dictionary compilation; and finally enhancing the effect of language expression. The third section of this part reviews the three phases of Chinese academic research in this area: phase one, the pilot study, starts with the founding of China and ends in mid-1980's; phase two, further development, covers the years from mid-1980s and mid-1990s; phase three, multiplex study, lasts from mid-1990s up to now. Finally the research approaches are introduced: (1) this research is both descriptive and expository, describing the features and forming mechanism of embedding structure, explaining the corresponding phenomena and problems with theories of cultural linguistics and cognitive linguistics, and exploring the nature and intrinsic law of its development; (2) this study is both quantitative and qualitative: figures and graphs are used to describe the linguistic facts; then qualitative approaches are employed to explain the language phenomena; (3) the method of comparison is worth special attention. This dissertation classifies the embedding structures into four types according to differences in part of speech and comparative analysis and explanation are made on some typical examples.Chapter two is indeed a general description of the embedding structure. It first clarifies the connotation of the term"embedding structure"as scholars have offered different terms for the same"AB/A…"and"…A…B"construction, such as"four-character linguistic pattern""model phrase"or"quasi-set phrase."Thus elucidating the very reason why"the embedding structure"is chosen among all these as the specific term and further restricting it to the lexical sense. To avoid confusion and misunderstanding, the section also offers a comparison between"embedding structure""syntax format"and"word formation model."The second section of this chapter focuses on the nature and features of embedding structure as a typical and special Chinese lexical unit. Despite some common ground shared with word and set phrase, this structure has more differences from the other two worthy of attention. Some expressions in western languages are also studied here: seemingly formal similarity and actually essential divergence. Embedding structure is characterized by it reasonability, fixity and productivity. The fixed part of the embedding structure is the focus in the third section and is classified by analyzing whether these two characters are of the same part of speech, in the paralleling position, in the identical form, and what their meaning relation is. Features generalized, meaning changes and syntactic positions studied, the dissertation goes on to explore grammaticalization of this part. Then naturally the fourth section takes as its focus the embedded part. These characters are mainly notional words such as nouns, verbs and adjectives, and the embedding is achieved in two ways: either a paratactic bi-syllable phrase is divided and inserted in between, or mono-syllable characters which are identical, similar, opposite, analogous, or related in meaning are put in respectively. Choice of these characters usually observes the rules of coherence, prominence, cultural stipulations, extensity and timeliness. The fifth section discusses four-character phrases in the embedding form. Degrees of immobilization is studied according to characteristics of the fixed and embedded parts, the intensity of meaning and the way of formation; grades of lexicalization is explored in terms of the fixity of the form, the fusion of meaning and frequency of use; then the subjective notion of incremental quantity is investigated by the theory of quantity category. In actual usage, four-character phrases are relatively independent and may function as subject, predicate, object, attributive, adverbial or complement in a sentence, but the most common sentence elements we find four-character phrases act as are predicate and adverbial, thus this kind of phrase tends to be predicationized.A study on the typical embedding structure is done in the third chapter. The first section surveys five types of embedding structure, that is, substantive, verbal, adjectival, numerals and adverbial. Then the following seven sections research upon representative phrases in each category: nouns of locality and body-parts for substantive embedding structure; substantive verbs among verbal structure; spatial and dimensional adjectives representing adjectival structure; numerals embedding structure; negative adverbs and time adverbs in adverbial embedding structure. The research approaches ran through all these sections are: first, through a comparative study of embedding phrases of the same type, we may find asymmetry in forming four-character phrases between different characters in the embedding structure and identify the underlying causes; second, an in-depth analysis is carried out upon the embedded parts in terms of their parts of speech and semantic meaning; third, we may further explore the similarities and differences between constructional semantics of different types of embedding structure. For example,"东…西…","左…右…"and"前…后…"are all localizer embedding structures and these characters are all indicative of repetition and continuation of action, but the first is certainly the most powerful in shaping four-character phrases. Similarities and differences in constructional semantics of these three are analyzed to explore the deep-lying reasons.The fourth chapter probes into three motivating forces behind this embedding structure. From the exterior, historical tradition and national culture of the Chinese people, to be exact, the specific mode of thinking and aesthetic sensibility, classical poems with four characters each line, facilitate the formation of the embedding phrases. In the interior, characteristics of the Chinese language and its laws of development motivate the development of embedding phrases. Abundant four-character phrases, Chinese emphasis on parataxis, its repetitive tendency, and gradual improvement in Chinese word formation are all contributive. At last the language mechanism should be counted also as an internal influence upon the embedding structure. This dissertation chooses to discuss mainly the mechanism of symmetry, analogy, economy .In Chapter Five, application research upon the embedding structure is carried out. On the one hand, this research may be applied to language learning, especially leaning Chinese as a foreign language. This dissertation investigates various editions of Chinese textbook for foreign students, and generalizes specific rules and methods in teaching embedding structure. On the other, the findings of this research may be helpful in dictionary compilation, especially in how to selecting entries of embedding structure. High productivity and high frequency of availability should be taken as the guiding principles here.The innovative points of this dissertation lie both in its systematic research upon and commonality description of the embedding structure, which breaks away from the common isolated case studies and in its emphasis on and contribution to the application study of this structure.