The Asymmetry of Chinese/English Action-Result Events Encoding: A Cognitive Approach

Duxin Cao

College of International Studies, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.

DOI: 10.4236/ojml.2013.32017                

Abstract

The present paper attempts to look at Chinese resultative verb compounds form the perspective of cognitive relativism, namely through the contrastive study of Chinese and English verb-resultatives. Based on the comparison, the present thesis tries to explore the underlying conceptual approaches to structuring events consisting of both action and result by Chinese native speakers and English native speakers and show the discrepancies between them in cognition or more specifically, conceptualization of reality. Resultative verb compounds in Chinese are analyzed in terms of Talmy’s conceptual structure and are shown to present a problem for Talmy’s well-known typological dichotomy between "verb-framed" and "satellite-framed" languages. It is also argued that the so-called "resultative complement" in Chinese resultative verb compounds can be treated as the center of predication, even as the main verb. Pending further psycholinguistic evidence, it appears that Chinese speakers place relatively more emphasis on the result of an event, whereas English speakers more on the process of an event.

Keywords

Cognitive Approach; Relativism; Conceptual Structure; Chinese and English Verb-Resultatives

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

[1]	Bloom, A. H. (1981). The linguistic shaping of though: A study in the impact of language on thinking in China and the West. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
[2]	Chang, J.-H. (2001). The syntax of event structure in Chinese. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Dissertation.
[3]	Chang, J.-H. (2003). Event structure and argument linking in Chinese. Language and Linguistics, 4, 317-351.
[4]	Chao, Y. R. (1968). A grammar of spoken Chinese. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
[5]	Cheng, L. L.-S., & James Huang, C.-T. (1994). On the argument structure of resultative compounds. In M. Chen, & O. Tzeng (Ed.), Interdisciplinary studies on language and language change (pp. 187-221). Taipei: Pyramid.
[6]	Dowty, D. (1979). Word meaning and montague grammar. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company. doi:10.1007/978-94-009-9473-7
[7]	Her, O.-S. (2007). Argument-function mismatches in mandarin resultatives: A lexical mapping account. Lingua, 117, 221-246. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2006.01.002
[8]	Huang, C.-T. J. (1988). Wo pao de kuai and Chinese phrase structure. Language, 64, 274-311. doi:10.2307/415435
[9]	Huang, C.-T. J. (1992). Complex predicates in control. In R. Larson, U. Lahiri, S. Iatridou, & J. Higginbotham (Eds.), Control and grammar (pp. 109-147). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
[10]	Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, fire, and dangerous things. Chicago: Chicago University Press. doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226471013.001.0001
[11]	Langacker, R. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar. Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
[12]	Langacker, R. (1991). Foundations of cognitive grammar. Descriptive application. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
[13]	Li, C. N., & Sandra, A. T. (1981). Mandarin Chinese: A functional reference grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press.
[14]	Li, Y. F. (1999). Cross-componential causativity. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 17, 445-497. doi:10.1023/A:1006236828263
[15]	Lucy, J. (1992). Grammatical categories and cognition: A case study of the linguistic relativity hypothesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511620713
[16]	Quine, W. (1969). Ontological relativity and other essays. New York: Columbia University Press.
[17]	Rapoport, T. R. (1993). Stage and adjunct predicates: Licensing and structure in secondary predication constructions. In E. Reuland, & W. Abraham (Eds.), Knowledge and language volume II: Lexical and conceptual structure (pp. 157-182). Amsterdam: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
[18]	Rappaport, H., Malka, & Beth, L. (2001). An event structure account of English resultatives. Language, 77, 766-797. doi:10.1353/lan.2001.0221
[19]	Simpson, J. (1983). Resultatives. In L. Levin, M. Rappaport, & A. Zaenen (Eds.), Papers in lexical-functional grammar (pp. 143-158). Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.
[20]	Tai, J. H.-Y. (1999). Verb-copying in Chinese revisited. Chinese languages and linguistics 5: Interactions in language, 97-119. Taipei: Institute of Linguistics (Preparatory Office), Academia Sinica.
[21]	Talmy, L. (1985). Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms. In T. Shopen (Ed.), Language typology and syntactic description (pp. 36-149). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[22]	Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a cognitive semantic. Typology and process in concept structuring. Cambridge: MIT Press.
[23]	Thompson, & Sandra, A. (1973). Resultative verb compounds in Mandarin Chinese: A case for lexical rules. Language, 49, 361-379. doi:10.2307/412459
[24]	Ungerer, F., & Hans-Jorg, S. (1996). An introduction to cognitive linguistics. London: Longman.
[25]	Vendler, Z. (1967). Linguistics in philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
[26]	Wu, C. H. F. (1994). A study of counterfactuals in Chinese and in English. Taipei: Crane Publishing Company.
[27]	Zhang, S., & Bernd, S. (1998). Language-dependent classification: The mental representation of classifiers in cognition, memory, and ad evaluations. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 4, 375-385. doi:10.1037/1076-898X.4.4.375
[28]	Tai, J. (1989). Towards a cognition-based functional grammar of Chinese. Beijing: Beijing Language and Culture University Press.
[29]	Liu, C.-Z., & Zhang, Y. (2012). On compound causatives and resultatives in Chinese. Journal of Changchun Normal University, 1, 70-74.
[30]	Li, F. Q. (2011). The mapping of composite thematic roles to grammatical functions in mandarin resultative verb compounds. Journal of Foreign Languages, 6, 19-25.
[31]	Shen, J.-X. (2011). Six lectures on Chinese grammar. Beijing: Commercial Press.
[32]	Shen, L. (1993). On resultative construction in Chinese. Linguistic Researches, 3, 12-21.
[33]	Wang, Q., & Wu, Y.-Q. (2005). A comparative study of resultatives in Chinese and English. Journal of PLA University of Foreign Languages, 4, 17-23.
[34]	Wang, Y. (2008). The fourth paper on the new growth of linguistics: Exploration on post philosophy of language. Foreign Language Research, 4, 2-10.