A Cognitive Approach To Mandarin Concessive Conditionals

This work attempted to offer a comprehensive, descriptively adequate account ofconcessive conditionals in modern Chinese from a semantic, syntactic, pragmatic anddiscourse perspective. Cognitive Linguistics, Text Linguistics, Functional Grammar,Language Typology, Grammaticalization theory are used in the paper. The analysis showscognitive approach such as Construction Grammar, Prototype Categories，Subjectivity cansuccessfully describe all kinds of concessive conditionals.The paper is divided into eight chapters. The first chapter is the introduction and thelast one the conclusion, other chapters are as follows.Chapter2discusses the definition, classification, syntactic and semantic features ofconcessive conditionals. Concessions in modern Chinese indicates Anti-causal relationship,are divided into factual concessions and concessive conditionals. factual concessionsexpress that the same cause lead to the different effects, but concessive conditionalsexpress that the different causes lead to the same effect. Concessive conditionals aresentences that indicate that there is the same consequence under the some differentconditions, are both concessions and conditionals. The common semantic features ofconcessive conditionals as follows: multi-conditionals, the same consequence, irrelevance.Concessive conditionals are divided into three subtypes: one-condition concessiveconditionals, two-condition concessive conditionals and universal concessive conditionals.Chapter3discusses construction network of concessions conditionals and mechanismof extension. Three concessive conditionals constructions all are construction becausecertain aspects of their syntax or semantics cannot be derived from the properties of theircomponent parts or from other constructions existing in the language. Three concessiveconditionals constructions are basic level categories, and concessive conditionalsconstructions is their superordinate categories. each of three constructions evolves intosome untypical or marginal constructions based on compound sentence as the prototype,forms internal and external networks of constructions with family resemblance. Each ofderived constructions inherits some semantic features such as multi-condition,same-consequence, and retains, changes and loses such semantic features as anti-cause,irrelevance, presupposition, scalarity, irrealis, conditional relation. So the meaning of allthe concessions conditionals can be generalized into "multiple things are the same". Themechanisms for prototype construction developing into other constructions are generalization, metaphor, metonymy and so on, and the means of link are polysemy links,metaphorical extension links, and instance links.Chapter4discusses subjectivity of concessive conditionals. concessive conditionalsshow strong subjectivity, and some elements such as irrealis, modal, semantic scalarity,concessive markers reflect the speaker’s cognitive perspective, affect and epistemic status.The cognitive schema of three concessive conditionals is a result that the speakersconstrue the same conceptual content from a different point of view of knowledge,reflecting different perspectives and mental scanning of the speaker. One-conditionconcessive conditionals with virtual meaning often express desire, proposal, request,complaining and so on, which reflects the feelings of the speaker. Most of concessiveconditionals have modal auxiliary, and their latter clauses are often negative sentence,which reflects the speaker’s subjective awareness and emotional such as attitude, judgment,sentiment and evaluation. In addition, scalarity of one-condition concessive conditionalsalso is subjective cognition, and some markers of concessive conditionals contain mentalmeaning and subjective negative meaning.Chapter5discusses how concessive conditionals exit in discourse. The basicpragmatic function of concessive conditionals, especially one-condition concessiveconditionals, is to serve as discourse background information to clarify a topic, a point.There are four ways by which concessive conditionals tie the preceding sentences:1） pties the preceding sentences;2）q ties the preceding sentences;3）p, q tie the precedingsentences respectively;4） The whole sentence is related logically to the precedingsentences. Concrete means of cohesion are: anaphora, conjunction and lexical cohesion.There are three discourse structure function of concessive conditionals: to connect theabove text; to connect the above and the following text; summarize the preceding text.Among one-condition concessive conditionals, sentence "jishi p ye q" has the highestfrequency of use, appears normally in the written language,"napa p ye q","jiusuan p ye q"often appear in the spoken language," renping p ye q " and " zongshi p ye q "have thelowest frequency of use.Chapter6examines semantic source of markers of concessive conditionals. Thesemantic source of markers of concessive conditionals in modern Chinese is correlatedwith such meanings as scalarity, irrelevance, irrealis. Among concession conditionsmarkers,"ji X" categories,"jiu X" categories,"ning X" categories origin from themeaning of scalarity, irrealis;"napa" categories,"ren X" categories,"zong X" categories origin from the meaning of irrelevance, irrealis. Compared with the cross-languageresearch foundings, it is claimed that the emergence and development of markers ofconcessions condition in modern Chinese show a cross-language language universaltendencies.Chapter7examines synchronic variation and diachronic evolution of concessiveconditionals. One-condition concessive conditionals correlate semantically with thefactual concessions, universal concessive conditionals, progressive compound sentences,disjunctive compound sentences, conditions compound sentences, and according to thissemantic correlation we amended the previous semantic map for conjunctions. The basicdirection of grammaticalization of concessive conditionals is as follows: developing fromdual events to a single event semantically; developing from compound sentences to asingle clause syntactically. In addition, some of concessive conditionals change intofactual concessions. The motivation and mechanism for concessive conditionals to changeare as follows: generalization, inference, subjectivisation, absorb of text, cognitiveprominence.From the above specific conclusions, the following views are obtained.First, Concessions in modern Chinese indicates Anti-causal relationship, are dividedinto factual concessions and concessive conditionals. Concessive conditionals are dividedinto three subtypes: one-condition concessive conditional(abbreviated as OCC),two-condition concessive conditional(abbreviated as TCC) and universal concessiveconditional(abbreviated as UCC).The reason why these three subtypes are analyzed assubtypes of one general construction type is that they all have many commoncharacteristics in semantics, syntax, pragmatics, discourse and diachronic change, butfactual concessions have not these ones. These common characteristics are as follows.1）These three constructions all imply such semantic features as multi-conditionals, the sameconsequence, irrelevance;2） All develop into a clause based on a compound sentence asprototype,and one-condition concessive conditional and universal concessive conditionaldevelop into factual concessions “p，but q”;3）Their pragmatic function is to encodebackground information in discourse, such as elaborating on a foregoing statement orexplicate one’s point;4） both one-condition concessive conditional and universalconcessive conditional exhibit strong subjectivity;5） Semantic origins of these markersof concessive conditionals is all related to such meaning as irrelevance or scalarity，andverbal component of these markers all denote psychological meaning;6） individual concessions conditional and full concession conditions based on the generalizationmechanism to develop a single sentence, evolved out of the fact concessive complexsentences.Second, the three kinds of sentences all are prototype categories, and each evolve sfrom compound sentence as a prototype to some untypical or marginal constructions,forms the respective network of construction, expresses the meaning of "multiple thingsare the same ".Third, there exit a great number of semantic, functional commonalities betweenone-condition concessive conditionals and universal concessive conditionals among thesethree constructions, and one-condition concessive conditionals evolve into the mostconstructions, express the most pragmatic function.Fourth, one-condition concessive conditional and two-condition concessiveconditionals relate to semantically and diachronically universal concessive conditional,the latter evolved from the former two.