| The Antonymy Co-occurrence Construction(the ACC for short)is a common linguistic structure both in Chinese and English,for example,“cheng bai” and “dong xi nan bei” in Chinese and their respective equivalents “victory and defeat” and “here and there” in English.Despite many achievements in the relevant studies on the ACC,there still exist some issues worth investigating.In particular,there has been no research done about the formation mechanism of the ACC's semantic structure.Furthermore,the previous research in this regard lacks systematicity and comprehensiveness to some extent,and the diachronic semantic research is relatively rare.Meanwhile,no cross-language research about the ACC has been carried out between Chinese and English.Given all this above,this dissertation will use the self-built analytical model and carry out a relatively systematic and comprehensive cross-language research about the semantic structures of the Chinese and English ACCs in a taxonomic hierarchical system and will mainly focus on three issues:(1)the formation mechanism of the ACC's semantic structure and its internal relationships;(2)the types and properties of the ACC's semantic structure;(3)the development of the semantic structure of the ACC used as a pragmatic marker.The main findings are summarized as follows:Firstly,different cognitive and pragmatic factors interact with each other during the formation process of the ACC's semantic structure.The encyclopedia set in human beings' brain which functions as the basis for the production and comprehension of linguistic expressions can activate a cognitive domain matrix about a certain concept on specific occasions.The declarative,interrogative,exclamatory or imperative constructional contexts as well as the speakers' intention of providing information,requesting for information or doing things with words function together as two driving forces,and can activate at least one salient cognitive domain.The relevant antonym pair X and Y which have canonical or non-canonical antonymy within this cognitive domain can also be activated and extracted by human beings' brain.Meanwhile,the cognitive domain to which this antonym pair belongs owns some conceptual contents.Finally,through the interaction with a certain construal device,the semantic structure of the ACC comes into being.Both the Chinese and English ACCs' semantic structures follow this formation path.Since the construal device plays a decisive part in this process,this dissertation then takes it as the key to understanding the formation mechanisms of the Chinese and English ACCs' semantic structures.Results show that both the same and different construal devices can lead to the production of different ACCs,mainly including formal and semantic symmetry as well as semantic symmetry and formal asymmetry.A careful analysis of the data from the corpora shows that the ACC's semantic structure has three main internal relationships,namely coordination,logic and autonomy-dependence.By comparison,it is found that the semantic structures' internal relationships of the Chinese and English ACCs also show some symmetric and asymmetric properties.Both the amounts and types of the former count more than the latter,which reflects the similarity between the Chinese and English ACCs' semantic structures' internal relationships is more significant than their differences.Secondly,the ACC has multiple semantic structure types,namely compositional meaning,neutralizing meaning,partial meaning,figurative meaning and conventional meaning.These five types lie on the same semantic transparency continuum,each of which weakens one by one from left to right.The similarity of the first three semantic structure types between the Chinese and English ACCs is more significant than the fourth one,while the differences between them are more significant in the fourth type,mainly due to the different types of figurative devices.As to the fifth type,it is closely related to the ACCs' usage frequency in the language community and has finally been established after a long period of time.Meanwhile,the ACC shows five semantic structure properties from the synchronic perspective,namely,intertextuality,compositionality,subjectivity,intersubjectivity and also dynamicity.Both the Chinese and English ACCs' semantic structures have these five properties,within which lie their individualities.The property of intertextuality is influenced by two factors: formal symmetry and semantic complementation.The semantic complementation is further classified into compositional complementation,mixed complementation,relational complementation and abbreviated complementation of the former and latter constituent parts.The property of compositionality has a close relationship with the figurative semantic structure type,which can be further classified into high,medium and low degree of compositionality according to the related and accessible degrees between the constituent parts' literal meanings and their figurative meanings.The property of subjectivity emerges through the whole ACC's coercion on its antonymic morphemes or lexical items belonging to different syntactic categories.The property of subjectivity is the prerequisite for the property of intersubjectivity,because only if the subjectivity of both communicative parties has been strengthened to the highest point can the subjective interaction process be realized.Therefore,it is safe to say that the property of subjectivity and intersubjectivity of the ACC's semantic structure lie on the same continuum.The property of subjectivity's transferring to the property of intersubjectivity can show that the ACC's semantic structure also has the property of dynamicity which can also be classified into three sub-types: dynamicity of the meaning,dynamicity of the function and dynamicity of the form.Thirdly,the usage of the ACC as a pragmatic marker is one of its evolution results,showing the dynamicity property from a diachronic perspective.The dissertation then uses the CCL and COHA corpora to make quantitative and qualitative explorations of the pragmatic markers' development of the Chinese and English ACCs' semantic structures of “ni xin bu xin” and “ladies and gentlemen”respectively.The analysis of these two typical cases shows that both the Chinese and English ACCs tread different paths leading to the same destination: both of them have evolved into pragmatic markers through different evolution paths,with subjectivization as the Chinese modal marker's evolution motivation and pragmaticalization as the English vocative marker's evolution motivation.These two Chinese and English ACCs' evolution into pragmatic markers has not happened overnight but has undergone a long process of semantic bleaching.Meanwhile,they also show pragmatic versatility,and the Chinese modal marker has many variant forms.As two different nodes in the ACC's taxonomic hierarchical system,the case analysis made in the dissertation can offer some helpful implications for relevant studies in the future.The cross-language research between the Chinese and English ACCs' semantic structures has proved that Chinese is parataxis-prominent,while English hypotaxis-prominent.Language is the carrier of thought.Both the Chinese and English users follow similar thinking ways and cognitive rules when conceptualizing the ACCs' semantic structures,which is actually the prerequisite and also basis for the two nations' cross-language communication.The ACC's integration of two opposite notions together embodies the thought of “Unity of Opposites”.The fact that different kinds of ACCs exist ubiquitously in daily communication both in Chinese and English reflects that both of the two languages penetrate this thought,which plays an important part in both oriental and western civilizations.Besides this similarity,there also exist some differences in thinking ways and national psychology between these two nations: the Chinese users pay more attention to the “Cosmology” and the “View of Unanimity of Heaven and Man”.Under the influence of the traditional Confucianism and Taoism,the Chinese users show better imaginal and intuitive thinking abilities,as well as the national psychological characteristics of introversion,conservativeness and cautiousness.However,the English users pay more attention to the “Substance Dualism”.Under the influence of the Christianity,they show better abstract thinking abilities and the national psychological characteristics of openness and straightforwardness.To sum up,the study of the formation mechanism of the Chinese and English ACCs' semantic structures in its taxonomic hierarchical system is a supplement and development to the present research while other relevant cognitive and pragmatic studies based on this formation mechanism is of great systematicity and comprehensiveness.This dissertation can help us understand and grasp the nature of this linguistic phenomenon in a better way.The common and individual analysis in this study can not only help us avoid producing some rigid and even weird translation between Chinese and English,but also offer some insights for improving second language teaching at home and foreign language teaching abroad.Seen from the perspective of cultural development,the similarities of the two nations' thinking ways and cognitive rules can help us find out some integrating points and build up an understandable bridge between the two civilizations for better communications and cooperation. |
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