An Analysis of the Inferential Meaning of Chinese Even-Construction for Semantic Parsing

Abstract

The even-construction in Chinese, whose form is lian + X + dou + Y, has been thoroughly investigated in Chinese linguistics. However, in natural language processing, the representation and acquisition of the full meaning of the construction remains to be a tough question. From the perspective of construction grammar, we compare the semantic functions of the even-construction and the corresponding subject-predicate structure. The meanings of the even-construction include a basic proposition and an inferential meaning. The basic proposition of the construction is the occurrence of an unlikely event. There are three kinds of interrelated but distinguishable inferential meanings: (1) the occurrence of an unlikely event means some related and more likely events will happen or have happened; (2) the occurrence of an unlikely event indicates an entity involved in the event has some special attributes; (3) the speaker expresses some subjective attitudes towards the occurrence of an unlikely event. Based on the analysis of the meaning of the even-construction, the ways to compute the meaning are discussed in this paper. It is also pointed out that the semantic computation of the construction depends on much linguistic knowledge, world knowledge and common sense, and temporary contextual information in communication.