Cover not available

Article published In: Concentric
Vol. 45:2 (2019) ► pp.211–245

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF

Conceptualization of containment in Chinese

A corpus-based study of the Chinese space particles lǐ, nèi, and zhōng

 | National Taiwan Normal University
 | National Taiwan Normal University
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 1 November 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/consl.00009.su
Abstract
This study investigates the semantic variations of three near-synonymous space particle constructions of containment in Chinese: [zài NP lǐ/nèi/zhōng]. While previous work has mostly applied qualitative analyses of the semantic differences between these particles, this study presents a corpus-based analysis examining the relationship between space particles and their co-occurring landmarks in the locative construction. Two quantitative analyses were conducted: a multiple distinctive collexeme analysis and a post-hoc semantic analysis. Our results suggest the following. First, lǐ is a more unmarked particle in encoding containment, co-occurring with both canonical landmarks and a wider range of entities. Second, nèi shows a strong preference for landmarks denoting temporal concepts; this metaphorical use often implies a preplanned objective in the proposition, with the landmark as an intended deadline. Finally, zhōng shows a strong connection to landmarks denoting high-dynamicity events. This extended use often comes with a marked aspectual reading of the landmark.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1A usage-based constructionist approach to grammar
    • 2.2Containment particles in Chinese
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Data analysis
    • 3.2Multiple distinctive collexeme analysis
    • 3.3Semantic analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Multiple distinctive collexeme analysis
      • 4.1.1[zài NP nèi]
      • 4.1.2[zài NP zhōng]
      • 4.1.3[zài NP lǐ]
    • 4.2Semantic analyses
      • 4.2.1 concreteness
      • 4.2.2 time-relatedness
      • 4.2.3 dynamicity
  • 5.Conceptualizing containment
    • 5.1Containment with concrete entities
    • 5.2Containment with temporal entities
    • 5.3Containment with dynamic entities
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • List of abbreviations for inter-linear glossing
  • References
References (50)
References
Boers, Frank. 1996. Spatial Prepositions and Metaphor: A Cognitive Semantic Journey Along the Up-Down and the Front-Back Dimensions. Tübingen, Germany: Gunter Narr Verlag.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boroditsky, Lera. 2000. Metaphoric structuring: Understanding time through spatial metaphors. Cognition 75.1:1–28. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Croft, William. 2001. Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic Theory in Typological Perspective. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Croft, William, and Alan Cruse. 2004. Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deng, Fang. 2006. Fangwei Jiegou “X Zhong/Li/Nei” Bijiao Yanjiu [A Contrastive Study of the Locative Structures “X Zhong/Li/Nei ”]. MA thesis, Jinan University, Canton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dewell, Robert B. 2005. Dynamic patterns of containment. From Perception to Meaning: Image Schemas in Cognitive Linguistics, ed. by Beate Hampe and Joseph E. Grady, 369–393. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Evans, Vyvyan, and Andrea Tyler. 2004. Spatial experience, lexical structure and motivation: The case of in . Studies in Linguistic Motivation, ed. by Günter Radden and Klaus-Uwe Panther, 157–192. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Firth, John Rupert. 1957. A synopsis of linguistic theory, 1930–55. Studies in Linguistic Analysis, ed. by John Rupert Firth, 1–31. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gibbs, Jr. Raymond W. 2005. Embodiment and Cognitive Science. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gilquin, Gaëtanelle. 2006. The verb slot in causative constructions: Finding the best fit. Constructions S1.3:1–46.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 2006. Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gries, Stefan Th. 2009. Quantitative Corpus Linguistics with R: A Practical Introduction. New York, NY: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gries, Stefan Th., and Anatol Stefanowitsch. 2004a. Co-varying collexemes in the into-causative. Language, Culture, and Mind, ed. by Michel Achard and Suzanne Kemmer, 225–236. Stanford, CA: CSLI.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2004b. Extending collostructional analysis: A corpus-based perspective on ‘alternations’. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 9.1:97–129. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gries, Stefan Th., and Nick C. Ellis. 2015. Statistical measures for usage-based linguistics. Language Learning 65.S1:228–255. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Huang, Chu-Ren, and Keh-jiann Chen. 2010. Academia sinica balanced corpus of modern Chinese 4.0. Academia Sinica. Retrieved January 13, 2016, from [URL]
Hunston, Susan, and Gill Francis. 2000. Pattern Grammar: A Corpus-Driven Approach to the Lexical Grammar of English. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray. 1983. Semantics and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Janda, Laura A. 2013. Quantitative methods in cognitive linguistics: An introduction. Cognitive Linguistics: The Quantitative Turn, ed. by Laura A. Janda, 1–32. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johnson, Mark. 1987. The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johnson, Mark, and George Lakoff. 2002. Why cognitive linguistics requires embodied realism. Cognitive Linguistics 13.3:245–263. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1993. The contemporary theory of metaphor. Metaphor and Thought, ed. by Andrew Ortony, 202–251. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 1991a. Concept, Image, and Symbol: The Cognitive Basis of Grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1991b. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar: Descriptive Application. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1997. Constituency, dependency, and conceptual grouping. Cognitive Linguistics 8.1:1–32. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen, Sérgio Meira, and The Language and Cognition Group. 2003. ‘Natural concepts’ in the spatial topological domain – adpositional meanings in crosslinguistic perspective: An exercise in semantic typology. Language 79.3:485–516. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lindstromberg, Seth. 2010. English Prepositions Explained: Revised Edition. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mandler, Jean Matter, and Cristóbal Pagán Cánovas. 2014. On defining image schemas. Language and Cognition 6.4:510–532. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Menzel, Peter. 1975. Semantics and Syntax in Complementation. Hague, Netherlands: Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miller, George Armitage, and Philip N. Johnson-Laird. 1976. Language and Perception. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ono, Tsuyoshi, and Sandra A. Thompson. 1996. Interaction and syntax in the structure of conversational discourse: Collaboration, overlap, and syntactic dissociation. Computational and Conversational Discourse: Burning Issues – An Interdisciplinary Account, ed. by Eduard H. Hovy and Donia R. Scott, 67–96. Berlin: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pollio, Howard R., Lance B. Fagan, Thomas R. Graves, and Priscilla Levasseur. 2005. The semantics of space: Experiential and linguistic aspects of selected English spatial terms. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 34.2:133–152. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sandra, Dominiek, and Sally Rice. 1995. Network analyses of prepositional meaning: Mirroring whose mind – the linguist’s or the language user’s? Cognitive Linguistics 6.1:89–130. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sinclair, John. 1991. Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stefanowitsch, Anatol, and Stefan Th. Gries. 2003. Collostructions: Investigating the interaction of words and constructions. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 8.2:209–243. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2005. Covarying Collexemes. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 1.1:1–43. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Svorou, Soteria. 1994. The Grammar of Space. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Talmy, Leonard. 1983. How language structures space. Spatial Orientation: Theory, Research, and Application, ed. by Herbert L. Pick, Jr. and Linda P. Acredolo, 225–282. New York, NY: Plenum Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thompson, Sandra A., and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen. 2005. The clause as a locus of grammar and interaction. Discourse Studies 7.4–5:481–505. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tomasello, Michael. 2003. Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tyler, Andrea, and Vyvyan Evans. 2001. Reconsidering prepositional polysemy networks: The case of over . Language 77.4:724–765. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2003. The Semantics of English Prepositions: Spatial Scenes, Embodied Meaning, and Cognition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Xing, Fu Yi. 1996. Fangwei jiegou “X li” yu “X zhong” [The locative structure “X li” and “X zhong ”]. Shijie Hanyu Jiaoxue 41:4–15.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yang, Hui. 2008. Ronchi fangweici li zei zhong wai de kongjian yiyi [The spatial meaning of words of containers li, nei, zhong, wai ]. Shichuan Jiaoyu Xuebao 24.12:74–76.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zaenen, Annie, Jean Carletta, Gregory Garretson, Joan Bresnan, Andrew Koontz-Garboden, Tatiana Nikitina, M. Catherine O’Connor, and Tom Wasow. 2004. Animacy encoding in English: Why and how. Proceedings of the 2004 ACL Workshop on Discourse Annotation, ed. by Bonnie Webber and Donna Byron, 118–125. Stroudsburg, PA: Association for Computational Linguistics. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zeng, Chuan-lu. 2005. “Li, zhong, nei, wai” fangwei yinyu de renzhi fenxi [A cognitive analysis of the orientational metaphors in “li, zhong, nei, wai ”]. Guizhou Daxue Xuebao (Shehui Kexue Ban) 11:104–107.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zhang, Jin Sheng, and Yun Hung Liu. 2008. “Li” “zhong” “nei” kongjian yiyi de renzhi yuyanxue kaocha [A cognitive linguistic analysis of the spatial meanings of li, zhong, and nei ]. Jiefangjun Waiguoyu Xueyuan Xuebao 31.3:7–12.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Liao, Shengyu, Stefan Th. Gries & Stefanie Wulff
2025. Transfer five ways: applications of multiple distinctive collexeme analysis to the dative alternation in Mandarin Chinese. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 21:3 ► pp. 517 ff. DOI logo
Chen, Alvin Cheng-Hsien
2022. Words, constructions and corpora: Network representations of constructional semantics for Mandarin space particles. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 18:2 ► pp. 209 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 8 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue