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Towards a Lexical Analysis on Chinese Middle Constructions

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Chinese Lexical Semantics (CLSW 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 11173))

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Abstract

This paper aims to provide a formal analysis on Chinese middle constructions in a lexical approach. In analyzing the middle constructions, there are two prominent issues that are discussed: (1) how does the transitive complex predicate become intransitive in the middle constructions? (2) how to assign the semantic roles to the logical object and the implicit argument? To answer the first question, the study makes use of the argument composition technique to append the arguments together in HPSG (Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar). Then this study makes use of a flat semantics analysis within the MRS (Minimal Recursive Semantics) framework to constrain the semantic relations. The analysis shows that a lexical approach can deal with the syntax-semantics interface issues of the middle constructions with complex predicates.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to the anonymous reviewers of CLSW 2018 for the comments and the Research Projects of Communication University of China (CUC16B09, CUC18JL104) for the support. Special thanks go to Junping Zhang for her help in delivering the speech.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics, Communication University of China, Beijing, 100024, China

    Lulu Wang

Authors
  1. Lulu Wang
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Correspondence to Lulu Wang .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Jia-Fei Hong

  2. Peking University, Beijing, China

    Qi Su

  3. National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi, Taiwan

    Jiun-Shiung Wu

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Wang, L. (2018). Towards a Lexical Analysis on Chinese Middle Constructions. In: Hong, JF., Su, Q., Wu, JS. (eds) Chinese Lexical Semantics. CLSW 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11173. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04015-4_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04015-4_20

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-04014-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-04015-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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