Abstract
One criterion of linguistic theory is descriptive adequacy, i.e., whether it can capture the speaker’s intuition [1]. Traditional structuralist analyses and contemporary generative grammar largely confine themselves to structural description and analyses, which fails to explain the precise use of linguistic units. For example, one would find that for the Chinese compound word ròujiámó, 1) the speaker does not have to possess the structural knowledge to know how it is understood and used; and 2) people might have different perceptions towards words with supposedly identical structures, say, ròujiámó and dànchǎofàn. It is argued in this paper that Chinese compounds in general and ròujiámó in particular support two central claims of Cognitive Grammar, i.e., 1) linguistic units are stored in our brain in the form of networks of constructions; 2) the sanction of linguistic expressions is not the simple computation of rules but motivated by the whole network of constructions.
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Notes
- 1.
Note that the italicized form indicates the name of the snack, whereas the non-italicized form indicates the snack itself.
- 2.
Note that the subscript Ag. and Pt. are short for agent and patient respectively. Strictly speaking, mó and ròu are not agent and patient per se. However, if agent and patient are defined in a broader sense as two asymmetrical entities in in terms of force dynamics, mó and ròu can be taken as such. See [21] for the discussion of the distinction between proto-agent and proto-patient roles.
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Wang, L., Xu, X., Zhang, R. (2021). On the Adequacy of Grammatical Description: The Case of Ròujiámó (肉夹馍). In: Liu, M., Kit, C., Su, Q. (eds) Chinese Lexical Semantics. CLSW 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12278. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81197-6_28
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