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Article published In: Chinese Language and Discourse
Vol. 8:1 (2017) ► pp.51–94

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Semantics and chunking in written and conversational discourses

A corpus study of two near-synonymous words in Mandarin

 | University of California, Los Angeles
Published online: 21 September 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1075/cld.8.1.03su
Abstract
Although much has been written about the differences between written and conversational discourses, less work has been done on how these two discourse types differ in terms of chunking patterns. This study investigates the different meanings and chunking patterns two words have in Mandarin written and conversational discourses. To overcome the problem of comparability between written and conversational corpora, instead of using a single word, I use two near-synonymous Mandarin words, zhihou and yihou, both of which mean roughly ‘after’ or ‘later,’ and compare their meaning and chunking patterns in written and spoken corpora. The investigation regarding semantic distinctions revealed that in both writing and conversation, zhihou favors past and yihou favors future, and that in writing but not in conversation zhihou is more often used with immediate high transitivity actions and causal relations, whereas yihou is more often used with low transitivity states. Regarding chunking patterns, whereas conversation preserves different stages of chunking, written discourse mainly has the final clear-cut stage. This study demonstrates the importance of grounding grammatical investigations on discourse types and of the possible usefulness of using near-synonymous words or grammatical constructions as a way of getting round the problem of comparability.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical preliminaries
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Overall research design
    • 3.2The pair of near-synonymous words chosen: zhihou and yihou
    • 3.3Corpora
    • 3.4Coding of data
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Findings regarding the two words
    • 4.2Previous claims about the two words revisited
    • 4.3Overall corpus distribution
  • 5.Semantic distinctions in writing and conversation
    • 5.1 Zhihou favors past and yihou favors future in writing and conversation
    • 5.2 Zhihou indicates causal relations in writing but not in conversation
    • 5.3 Zhihou favors immediate high transitivity actions and yihou favors low transitivity states in writing but not in conversation
  • 6.Chunking in writing and conversation
    • 6.1Different chunks of the same word in writing and conversation
    • 6.2Conversation has different stages of chunking, whereas written discourse mainly has the final clear-cut stage
  • 7.Conclusions and implications
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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