A Study Of Oppositional Collocations With Commendatory And Derogatory Terms

The relationship between collocational structure and its constituents has always been the focus of theoretical linguistics.In terms of the collocations between different words and the interaction between words and the whole sentence patterns,many theories of linguistics have got involved in conducting comprehensive description and explanation.In particular,the Construction Grammar theory represented by Goldberg has become an emerging hotspot in recent years.Goldberg believes that form and meaning are inextricably linked,and they are closely integrated into a “symbolic unit”.Very large corpora have demonstrated that “the structure itself can express certain meaning,and the meaning cannot be deduced from the components of the structure or other known structures”.This notion of language philosophy,which is “larger than the sum of the parts,” not only overthrows the traditional concept of syntax and broadens the syntactic research,but also has shed some light on the applied research of language.The research object of this dissertation is “oppositional collocations”,a special type of predicate-complement structure composed of a commendatory adjective plus a derogatory complement,yet yielding a single positive meaning(Wang 2015: 80-81),such as shuai da le(handsome dumb le,‘extremely handsome’),ku bi le(cool dead le,‘extremely cool’),mei de yao si(beautiful de wanting to die,‘extremely beautiful’),hao de yao ming(good de wanting to die,‘extremely good’).Oppositional collocations do not simple exist in the collocation of adjectives plus degree complements,but they also exist in verbal phrases,such as xihuan si le(like dead le,‘extremely fond of’),ai de yao ming(love de wanting to die,‘love to much’),and so on.In order to tackle this issue in limited space and time in a more comprehensive manner,we focus only on the oppositional structure between adjectives and degree complements in Chinese.In light of quite a lot of in-depth study of “special constructions” and “marginal constructions”,we find that the simple application of construction grammar theory has some limitations in dealing with some special kind of constructions.Firstly,it is impossible to comprehensively and deeply analyze the generation mechanism of a new structure from the perspective of construction grammar alone.For example,the evolutionary process of the Chinese Oppositional Collocations need to be studied from the perspectives of both diachronicity and synchronicity,which requires us to employ the related knowledge of diachronic grammaticalization.Secondly,the grammaticalized item in Chinese Oppositional Collocations,that is,the degree complement,is rather complicated in that some of the components do not have “the meaning of degree” on themselves.Therefore,the use of construction grammar alone can not explain the acquisition of these terms’ mechanism in expressing “the polar degree” meaning.Thirdly,there is a huge difference in terms of the productivity of different grammatical structures,some of which are highly productive,while others are limited to the collocation of particular words.For this phenomenon,the theory of Construction Grammar cannot fully explain the underlying causes of the construction’s partial productivities.Fourth,Construction Grammar cannot fully explain the universality of a particular structure of different languages.We hold that some special linguistic phenomena are universal in languages,that is,there are similar special terms used in different languages,and similarities may also be found in their generating mechanism.In view of this,under the integrated theoretical framework of Construction Grammar theory and grammaticalization theory,this dissertation makes a comprehensive and in-depth study on the basic characteristics,generating mechanism,partial productivity and universality of the — oppositional construction.In terms of research methods,this dissertation adopts an integrated approach that combines theoretical discussion and corpus analysis to describe and explain the derogatory terms(34 words in total)that meet the requirements for the oppositional construction in Chinese from such three aspects as syntax,semantics,and pragmatics under the integrated framework of Constructional Grammar and Grammaticalization.In addition,this dissertation analyzes the generating mechanism of Chinese Oppositional Construction from the perspective of diachronicity and synchronicity.Finally,the universal feature of oppositional collocations is uncovered through a comparative analysis of the Chinese and English oppositional constructionsThe data used in this paper mainly come from three sources:(1)English and Chinese data bases,including BCC(BLCU Corpus Center),CCL(Center for Chinese Lingusitics PKU)and BNC(British National Corpus).(2)Data collected from the Internet or other researchers’ papers.(3)Instances made by the writer herself according to regular use norms.A special notice should be made here,that is,for the last two types of data the reason why these data are used is that Oppositional Collocations are very special in that they belong to unconventional expressions.They mainly appear in informal situations and are quite up to date.As a result,they normally can hardly be adequately and readily absorbed in large data bases,so other sources,when necessary,must be considered.The research contents mainly include:First of all,based on the predecessors’ demarcation and summrization of Chinese degree complements,we set up the scope of the derogatory degree complements in Chinese Oppositional Collocations,and describe the lexical semantic features of the derogatory degree complements and commendatory adjectives in Chinese Oppositional Collocations respectively.From the perspective of Construction Grammar theory,we expound the constructional features of Chinese Oppositional Collocations from three aspects: syntax,semantics and pragmatics.For the syntactic feature,this paper describes the syntactic features of four schematic constructions in Chinese Oppositional Collocations: “Adj+Complement+le”,“Adj+de+ Complement”,“Adj+Complement” and “Adverbial+Adj”,and makes a distinction between the syntactic features of the adhensive construction and composite construct.In terms of the semantic feature,the paper points out that the formation of Chinese Oppositional Collocations is affected by both construction coercion and lexical coercion.In terms of the pragmatic feature,we hold that the Chinese Oppositional Construction is not exactly the same as “oxymoron”,nor does it belong to “paradox”.Instead,it belongs to a special type that can be called “anomalous collocation”.Secondly,this dissertation analyzes the generating mechanism of Chinese Oppositional Collocations from the combined perspective of Construction Grammar and grammaticalization.First of all,the paper explores the process of grammaticalization of Chinese Oppositional Constructions from a diachronic perspective,and the grammaticalization mechanism of the structure is uncovered.The research finds that the mechanism of the syntactic evolution should include reanalysis and analogy.In the mechanism of semantic bleaching,the degree complement in Chinese Oppositional Constructions does not undergo grammaticalization in isolation;the grammaticalization of the degree complements cannot be separated from the linguistic environment in which the whole structure is emdedded,including semantic generalization,metaphor and metonymy mechanism and subjectivization.Thirdly,this dissertation analyzes the issue of partial productivity in Chinese Oppositional Constructions.The limited number of Chinese Oppositional Constructions is mainly related to its constructional meaning— the meaning of “polar degree”,and the construction’s complement and predicate components are constrained by the constructions.This is why we hold,that the Chinese Oppositional Constructions cherish the feature of partial productivity,which makes it possible to absorb unconventional components into the construction.In the meanwhile,the degree of grammaticalization of the grammaticalized element is strictly in line with the productivity of the structure,that is,the lower the degree of grammaticalization,the smaller the number of parts of speech,and the less productive the contruction becomes,or vice versa.The final contribution of the dissertation is that it reveals the universality of the oppositional collocations by comparing the Chinese Oppositional Collocations and the English ones.This particular linguistic phenomenon not only exists in Chinese,it is also pervasive in English,such as damn good,terribly glad,and so on.In order to demonstrate this similarity,some English instances are used as supporting data in tackling the basic components and the mechanism of Oppositional Constructions in the two languages.By comparison,this dissertation not only reveals the universality of the oppositional constructions in both Chinese and English,but also shows that universality does not deny individuality or specialty in some specific aspects.Similiarity exists in a more general sense,but in details,especially in the case of English oppositional collocations involving taboo words,some unique features are represented more conspicuously.Major contributions of the study are mainly reflected on the following three aspects:First of all,in research content,different from the “special constructions” or “marginal constructions” in previous studies that are based on conflicting forms and semantics,or simply formal conflicts,the Chinese Oppositional Collocations studied in this dissertation are characterized by formal conformity to the norms of standard grammar,but in the meanwhile containing significant conflict in semantics.In addition,it is found that the Chinese Oppositional Construction always expresses rich pragmatic and rhetorical effects.This construction is not exactly equivalent to “oxymoron”,nor does it belong to “paradox”,but to a kind of “anomalous collocation”.Secondly,in terms of theoretical construction,this dissertation adopts a theoretical framework combining Construction Grammar and grammaticalization.This framework seen from a macroscopic perspective,illustrates the generating mechanism of Chinese Oppositional Constructions more comprehensively,describes the flexible and changeable syntactic features of this construction,and the interactive semantic features of the construction meaning and lexical meaning.From the microscopic point of view,this paper uncovers the devaluation process of the derogatory terms in Chinese,and the process of moving from specific to abstract on the part of the construction meaning.By combining these two theories,this study avoids the deficiencies in the unilateral interpretation of the Construction Grammar theory and makes the best of the complementarity of the two theories.The study unfolds from both general and specific perspectives to deal with the grammaticalization process,the generating mechanism and the partial productivity of the construction concerned.Finally,this dissertation revealed the universality of the Oppositional Collocations by comparing Chinese and English instances.The study finds that both English and Chinese have the syntactic structure of “adverb +A”,such as kuang mei li(crazy beautiful,‘extremely beautiful’)and damn good;In terms of generating mechanism,both English and Chinese are quite consisitent,all covering reanalysis and analogy in syntactic evolution mechanism,and semantic generalization,metaphor and metonymy,and subjectivization in the semantic bleaching mechanism.Language development would not work without transferring of linguistic features from past to present,but language creation must be based on innovatively creating unconventional linguistic structures that are different from norms.However,to maintain certain necessary vitality in newly-created constructions,or lasting vitality,conventional factors must be taken into account,reaching a balance between new and old information,and the construction and the social environment.