| The Chinese construction“X zh(?)ng de X”(e.g.,“jīng diǎn zh(?)ng de jīng diǎn”[经典中的经典])has a similar structure with the attributive structure“X zh(?)ng de Y”(e.g.,“xīn mùzh(?)ng de dìwèi”[心目中的地位]).However,they differ in that the meaning of the former can neither be fully predicted from both its components nor how it is formed.This form-meaning mismatch of the“X zh(?)ng de X”construction has attracted much attention.Previous researchers have made some discussions about this construction,but there are still some limitations:(1)There is only a little research which explored this construction when words of different parts of speech enter the “X” slots: Most researchers have only focused on the “N zh(?)ng de N” construction;(2)Conclusions about the syntactic and semantic functions of this construction are controversial in some aspects(e.g.,whether it can be used as a predicate;whether it is referential;its constructional meaning is “polarity emphasis” or “two-way comparative recursion”);(3)Studies on the mechanisms and motivations of this construction are inadequate and not clear: Only a few researchers have made brief explanations of the construction from the perspective of inheritance,subjectivity,construction coercion,and iconicity.And its inheritance link is controversial(Some believed it is the subordinate construction of the attributive structure,while some considered it as the subordinate construction of the tautological construction).Based on these insufficiencies,three research questions of the current study are proposed:(1)What are the conditions for words to enter the two “X” slots in the “X zh(?)ng de X” construction?(2)What are the syntactic,semantic,and pragmatic features of the “X zh(?)ng de X” construction?(3)What are the cognitive mechanisms and motivations of the “X zh(?)ng de X” construction?Cognitive Construction Grammar(CCG)takes a usage-based view and regards constructions as form-meaning pairs.Taking it as the theoretical foundation,the present study can focus both on a detailed description and a sufficient explanation of the “X zh(?)ng de X” construction.Hence,it can provide new ideas to solve the problem of mismatch.Based on this perspective,this study uses qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze the actual usage of the construction in Beijing Language and Culture University Chinese Corpus(BCC),Center for Chinese Linguistics(CCL),and those used by previous researchers.Through the analysis,the major findings are:(1)Nouns,adjectives,verbs,adverbs,and some multi-category words(adjective-noun conversion words,verb-noun conversion words,and adjective-verb conversion words)can enter the “X” slots with different restrictions for each of them.However,the common restriction of the slots is that they should provide features to be made prominent.In this construction,“de” functions together with “zh(?)ng” to mark the cognitive bound of the features of “X”,and the two slots form two same conceptual domains.Through overlapping,all features of the domain are highlighted and become more prominent.Then,selected by the context,some of these prominent features are used to indicate the subjective commentary meaning.Syntactically,the “X zh(?)ng de X”construction can serve as the subject,appositive,object,attributive,predicative,adverbial,complement,and independent clause,but it does not have the function of the predicate.In addition,the construction is non-referential on the whole and the constructional meaning of the “X zh(?)ng de X” construction is “feature prominence”.Pragmatically,it appears mostly in informal texts as well as in the spoken language to express the subjective commentary meaning.And the commentary features generally have a positive tendency.(2)The generation and processing mechanisms of the “X zh(?)ng de X” construction include embodied cognition(scene coding hypothesis and quantity iconicity)and construction coercion.As for the motivations of the “X zh(?)ng de X” construction,inheritance(polysemy links and instance links),analogy(semantic attraction),the principle of economy and efficiency,syllable and auxiliary evolution in Chinese,and the psychological safe need of pragmatic vagueness provide some basic explanations for the questions why the “X zh(?)ng de X” construction is a good choice for both the speaker and the hearer in certain contexts and what the evolution of the “X zh(?)ng de X”construction is(especially “N zh(?)ng de N”).The current study has great implications both theoretically and practically.On the one hand,the study of the “X zh(?)ng de X” construction by means of Cognitive Construction Grammar can provide new ideas to the reflection on the studies of the construction itself and other related constructions,such as attributive construction,“Adv+ N” construction,and tautological construction.On the other hand,this study can provide useful implications for translation,language teaching,and language acquisition of Chinese constructions. |
