TITLE:
A Corpus-Based Study on the Variations of Semantic Constraints over Mandarin Chinese VV Construction in Different Sentential Contexts
AUTHORS:
Ying Fang
KEYWORDS:
Variations of Semantic Constraints, VV Construction, Simplex Sentential Contexts, Verbs, Collostructional Analysis, Force Dynamics
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.13 No.10,
October
24,
2025
ABSTRACT: The semantic constraints of VV construction in Mandarin Chinese have been of great concern in studies on reduplication as it is vital for the acquisition of the structure. However, previous researches scarcely consider the influence of sentential contexts over the semantic constraints of the construction. With the corpus-based empirical study, this paper examines the variations of semantic constraints over Mandarin Chinese VV construction in 9 different simplex sentential contexts. Statistics show that VV construction does exhibit variations of semantic constraints in different contexts. Research findings reveal the General Rule, the Sub-rule and the Specific rules for the variations. The interactions among the verbs, the simplex contexts and the VV construction may account for such variations: the sentential contexts, and the force dynamics of modality in the simplex sentences may affect the semantic features of verbs as well as that of the VV construction, resulting in the change or release of the semantic constraints of the VV construction. The study unveils the significance of the pragmatic and cognitive perspective in doing researches on the semantic constraints for VV construction. The research findings may contribute to second language teaching and natural language processing.