A Cognitive Approach To Mandarine Chinese “Adj Dian'er” Imperative Construction

From a Construction approach, this thesis tries to explore the Mandarine Chinese “Adj Dian'er” imperative construction. We attempt to investigate the semantic constraints of the adjective in this construction and its meaning construction mechanisms on the basis of the interaction theory.The Mandarine Chinese “Adj Dian'er” imperative construction is defined from two aspects, form and meaning. As for the form, “Adj Dian'er” imperative construction consists of an adjective and the quantifier “Dian'er”. The combination of the adjective and the quantifier“Dian'er” forms a particular construction. As for the meaning, “Adj Dian'er” imperative construction usually expresses an imperative meaning that the speaker tries to direct the hearer to do something.Based on the feature of this construction in form and meaning, this study attempts to answer the following two research questions under the guidance of the interaction theory of construction grammar.First, what are the semantic constraints of the adjective in “Adj Dian'er” imperative construction? How is the adjective restricted?Second, how does “Adj Dian'er” imperative construction construct its meaning due to the interaction between its elements and the construction?In order to answer the two research questions, a closed corpus with 150 items is established strictly according to the definition of this construction. By observing the data, this thesis finds that the semantic properties of the adjective and the meaning production are closely related with the bidirectional interaction between the construction and its elements.Accordingly, the thesis proposes a construction-element and element-element interactionmodel based on Goldberg's interaction theory and some concepts of coercion by Michaelis and Panther & Thornburg. In order to test the assumption and address the research questions in this study, we classify the linguistic data into two types and describe semantic features of the construction and its adjectives that occur in this construction on the basis of the corpus.Firstly, the interactive relation between the construction and the elements is discussed with the guidance of the construction-element and element-element interaction model. That is, the adjective is restricted both by the construction and the element “Dian'er”. Secondly, this study explores the contribution of the element “Dian'er”, the adjective and the construction in producing the constructional meaning.There are two major contributions of this study:Firstly, “Adj Dian'er” imperative construction is defined from two aspects of form and meaning. This thesis provides a cognitive explanation to the semantic properties of the adjective in “Adj Dian'er” imperative construction from the perspective of interaction theory.Besides, this thesis has explored the meaning construction of Mandarine Chinese “Adj Dian'er” imperative construction.Secondly, this thesis proposes the construction-element and element-element interaction model on the basis of Goldberg's interaction theory and coercion theories by Michaelis and Panther & Thornburg. This model has explained the semantic constraints of the adjective and the meaning construction of Chinese “Adj Dian'er” imperative construction.