TY - CHAP
T1 - Lexical Semantics of Mandarin Carry and Hold verbs
T2 - A Frame-Based Constructional Analysis of ná 拿 and wò 握
AU - He, Tianqi
AU - Liu, Meichun
AU - He, Hongfeng
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - This study aims to identify the lexical semantic distinctions of Mandarin carry and hold verbs by comparing their syntactic and semantic behaviors from a frame-based constructional approach. The two commonly used verbs ná 拿 and wò 握 are intensively examined in terms of their collocational distributions in BCC. It is found that ná 拿 behaves like caused motion verbs ‘carry’ as it is more likely to co-occur with directional markers. Whereas, wò 握 behaves more like hold verbs, which tends to collocate with static-durative markers. This shows that although both verbs pertain to hand movement, ná 拿 is lexicalized with a purpose of moving, while wò 握 typically denote ‘prolonged contact’. This study is significant in providing a pilot study of the two verbs representing two basic semantic frames with clearly defined semantic-to-syntactic distinctions, and the findings are feasible to the construction of Mandarin VerbNet.
AB - This study aims to identify the lexical semantic distinctions of Mandarin carry and hold verbs by comparing their syntactic and semantic behaviors from a frame-based constructional approach. The two commonly used verbs ná 拿 and wò 握 are intensively examined in terms of their collocational distributions in BCC. It is found that ná 拿 behaves like caused motion verbs ‘carry’ as it is more likely to co-occur with directional markers. Whereas, wò 握 behaves more like hold verbs, which tends to collocate with static-durative markers. This shows that although both verbs pertain to hand movement, ná 拿 is lexicalized with a purpose of moving, while wò 握 typically denote ‘prolonged contact’. This study is significant in providing a pilot study of the two verbs representing two basic semantic frames with clearly defined semantic-to-syntactic distinctions, and the findings are feasible to the construction of Mandarin VerbNet.
KW - Frame-based constructional approach
KW - Collocational distributions
KW - Corpus-based
KW - Hold
KW - Carry
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85101652079
UR - https://www.scopus.com/record/pubmetrics.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85101652079&origin=recordpage
U2 - 10.1007/978-981-32-9240-6_3
DO - 10.1007/978-981-32-9240-6_3
M3 - RGC 12 - Chapter in an edited book (Author)
SN - 9789813292390
T3 - Frontiers in Chinese Linguistics
SP - 39
EP - 50
BT - From Minimal Contrast to Meaning Construct
A2 - Su, Qi
A2 - Zhan, Weidong
PB - Springer
CY - Singapore
ER -