A Construction Grammar Study On Emerging Polarity Degree Expression "X Dao Mei Pengyou"

With the development of the Internet in recent years,Internet buzzwords that do not quite conform to Chinese grammatical rules and conventional expressions have been emerging.The emergence and formation of these buzzwords reflect the lifestyle and behavioral characteristics of Chinese people in today’s era,and at the same time,these Internet buzzwords have attracted the attention of linguists,who have applied linguistic theories to study the formation and development of Internet buzzwords.“X dao mei pengyou” is a typical expression among them.Some scholars have studied “X dao mei pengyou”,but the researches mostly focus on syntax,semantics and pragmatics,and the analyses on its formation mechanism and reasons of its popularity are rare,which leaves space for further research.This study builds a small corpus with linguistic data coming from BLCU Corpus Center(BCC Corpus)and Sina Weibo,from which the latest items are collected regularly.Based on Goldberg’s Construction Grammar and Coercion Theory,the study takes the emerging polarity degree expression “X dao mei pengyou” as the research object,and adopts a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods.The study investigates the constructional meaning,syntactic features,semantic features,pragmatic features and extension mechanism of the emerging polarity expression “X dao mei pengyou”.The following conclusions are drawn: First,“dao” is a constant complement,and“X” can be AP,VP,or NP,among which AP accounts for the most,VP the second,and NP the least.The construction “X dao mei pengyou” expresses degree meaning,strengthening the degree of the variable “X”.Secondly,in terms of syntactic analysis,the construction “X dao mei pengyou” can be used as predicate,modifier,object,subject and complement in the sentence,among which predicate accounts for the most,followed by modifier,object and subject,and complement accounts for the least.In terms of semantic analysis,the construction is divided into commendatory,derogatory and neutral meanings.In terms of pragmatic analysis,the pragmatic features of the construction are productivity and hyperbole,and there are three pragmatic functions,namely,to express high praise,to express discontent and to express teasing.Thirdly,this study analyzes the extension mechanism from three aspects: construction coercion,the cognitive mechanism of metaphor and the economy principle of language.As for the construction coercion,the qualities of adjectives coerce the qualities of verbs and nouns in order to make them display their adjective qualities so that the verbs and nouns can enter the construction and broaden the application scopes of the construction.The construction metaphorically represents the inanimate object X as a friendless animate object,which makes the polarity of the construction more vivid and conforms to the public’s cognitive habits.From the economy principle of language,the concise expression of the construction can achieve the maximum effect of linguistic exaggeration and meet the needs of the public to express.The study of the emerging polarity degree expression “X dao mei pengyou”helps analyze the reasons for the formation and development of online language,better understand the changes and development of language itself,and provide methodological references and theoretical paths for the study of other Chinese buzzwords.