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Article published In: Chinese Language and Discourse
Vol. 12:2 (2021) ► pp.215–237

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Manual action motivates networked meanings of a productive construction in Mandarin

Rethinking polysemy

ORCiD logo with link | University of Oregon
Published online: 18 January 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/cld.00032.hun
Abstract
This study analyzes the manual action verb dǎ as part of the [dǎ – NP] construction in two Chinese corpora. Drawing on constructionist perspectives on language productivity ( 2006. Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Gries, Stefan Th. 2012. “Frequencies, Probabilities, and Association Measures in Usage-/exemplar-based Linguistics.” Studies in Language 36 (3): 477–510. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), I show that [dǎ – NP] is a productive construction the multiple meanings of which are conceptually motivated by manual action. The type-token distributions show the productivity of the [dǎ – NP] schema, and the semantic clusters in a network of meanings show a gradation of manual action experiences with no clear-cut conceptual boundaries. Usage productivity goes hand in hand with semantic extension, which gives rise to the emergence of the light verb dǎ. Contra previous morpheme-based studies that view dǎ as a polysemy in its own right, isolated from its network of collocates, I argue that polysemy is a consequence and an epiphenomenon of constructional productivity resulting from language use and exemplar propagation.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data and methods
  • 3.Analysis and results
    • 3.1Type-token distributions of the pattern [dǎ – NP]
    • 3.2The schematic patterns and semantic clusters of dǎ
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Conceptual representation and exemplar model
    • 4.2The relationship between embodied conceptualization and language productivity
    • 4.3The polysemy of dǎ as a byproduct of constructional productivity
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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