Chinese Verbs and Lexical Distinction

Research output: Chapters, Conference Papers, Creative and Literary WorksRGC 12 - Chapter in an edited book (Author)peer-review

Abstract

Chinese verbs behave very differently from their counterparts in Indo-European languages and pose interesting challenges to the study of syntax-semantic interface for theoretical and applicational linguistics. The lexical semantic distinctions encoded in the Chinese verbal lexicon are introduced with a thorough review of previous works from different approaches with different concerns and answers. The recent development in constructing a digital database of verbal information in Mandarin Chinese, the Mandarin VerbNet, is also introduced, which offers frame-based constructional analyses of the Chinese verbs and verb classes. Finally, a case study on Chinese emotion verbs is presented to illustrate the unique properties of lexicalization patterns in Chinese verbs. In general, due to its typological characteristics in coding a Topic, rather than a Subject, as a prominent element in the sentence, Chinese shows a more flexible range of form-meaning mapping relations in lexical distinctions. © Oxford University Press 2023.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationOxford Research Encyclopedias
Subtitle of host publicationLinguistics
EditorsMark Aronoff
PublisherOxford University Press
ISBN (Electronic)9780199384655
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 22 Mar 2023

Publication series

NameOxford Research Encyclopedias

Bibliographical note

Research Unit(s) information for this publication is provided by the author(s) concerned.

Research Keywords

  • Chinese verbs
  • lexical semantic distinction
  • syntax-semantics interface
  • frame-based constructional approach
  • Mandarin VerbNet

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