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Article published In:
Chinese Language and Discourse
Vol. 12:2 (2021) ► pp.215–237

Manual action motivates networked meanings of a productive construction in Mandarin

Rethinking polysemy

ORCID logo | University of Oregon

This study analyzes the manual action verb dǎ as part of the [dǎ – NP] construction in two Chinese corpora. Drawing on constructionist perspectives on language productivity (Goldberg 2006; Gries 2012), I show that [dǎ – NP] is a productive construction the multiple meanings of which are conceptually motivated by manual action. The type-token distributions show the productivity of the [dǎ – NP] schema, and the semantic clusters in a network of meanings show a gradation of manual action experiences with no clear-cut conceptual boundaries. Usage productivity goes hand in hand with semantic extension, which gives rise to the emergence of the light verb dǎ. Contra previous morpheme-based studies that view dǎ as a polysemy in its own right, isolated from its network of collocates, I argue that polysemy is a consequence and an epiphenomenon of constructional productivity resulting from language use and exemplar propagation.

Keywords: manual action, productivity, polysemy, usage-based constructionist approach, Chinese
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data and methods
  • 3.Analysis and results
    • 3.1Type-token distributions of the pattern [dǎ – NP]
    • 3.2The schematic patterns and semantic clusters of dǎ
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Conceptual representation and exemplar model
    • 4.2The relationship between embodied conceptualization and language productivity
    • 4.3The polysemy of dǎ as a byproduct of constructional productivity
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 18 January 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cld.00032.hun
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