Abstract
The frame construction of four characters features structures both predictable and unpredictable, in terms of meanings. This study suggests that unpredictability shall not be taken as the only property of such structures. Components (A and B) included in the four-character frame construction should be semantically connected to a certain extent. Parallel relationship between the component A and component B in the construction is mainly divided into two groups, namely “similarity” and “opposite”, which in turn forms the syntactic union structure. Semantic appreciation and overall semantic metaphor or metonymy are the shared characteristics of the four-character constructions. Frame markers are flexible in terms of their parts of speech, expressing different semantic meanings. This reflects the semantic diversity of the Chinese language. The overall framing effect of the four-character construction is incremental, and its conceptual blending is categorized at three levels, namely high blending level, medium blending level and low blending level.
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Wei, H. (2021). A Semantic Study on Frame Constructions of Four Characters. 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_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81197-6_5
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