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Article published In:
Cognitive Linguistic Aspects of Information Structure and Flow
Edited by Wei-lun Lu and Jirí Lukl
[Cognitive Linguistic Studies 7:2] 2020
► pp. 307–333

Cognitive-functional principles and Chinese linear order

The containment schema

| Ca’Foscari University of Venice | The University of Sydney

In Modern Standard Chinese, word order patterns and constructions are motivated by factors and restrictions connected to different levels of linguistic organization, including not only semantics and syntax, but also pragmatics, information-structure, and the conceptual domain. The functional and the cognitive paradigms have offered distinct but complementary perspectives capable of accounting for word order patterns and regularities related to either the topic-prominent nature of Chinese or the iconic dimension of its grammar. This article shows how cognitive and functional aspects are in fact tightly intertwined and display significant and not yet fully explored parallelisms. Specifically, it looks into the notions of ‘frame’, ‘scope’, and ‘part’, features shared by both functional accounts of topic-comment structures and conceptually motivated word order principles. It proposes a qualitative corpus analysis of such notions and shows that first, Chinese topics are better defined in terms of frames; second, a number of word order regularities can be accounted for with a single cognitive-functional schema, which I refer to as frame-part, or frame-participant, which is connected to the image schema of containment. This article hopes to contribute to bridging the gap between functional studies on information structure in Chinese and perspectives offered by the cognitive approach to linguistic structures, and to offer effective tools for Chinese as a second language acquisition.

Keywords: topic, frame-part, containment, cognitive-functional principles, word order, corpus data, Modern Standard Chinese
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The notions of frame, scope, and part in the two approaches
    • 2.1The functional approach
    • 2.2The cognitive approach
  • 3.Assumptions and methodological remarks
  • 4.Topics as frame-setters
  • 5.Topic recursion, frame-setting, and visual field
  • 6.A unified account: Linearization pattern of the containment schema in Chinese
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 October 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cogls.00059.mor
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