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Cognitive Linguistic Studies
Vol. 3:2 (2016) ► pp.233–258

Chinese as satellite-framed

A constructional-cognitive interpretation

| Department of English, University of Macau
This article defends the position taken by Talmy that Mandarin Chinese is satellite-framed, and thus argues against Slobin and Chen and Guo that Mandarin is ‘equipollently-framed’. The approach we take is constructional and cognitive in that we draw insights from Construction Grammar and Cognitive Grammar, though it is not restricted to either of them. A more unconventional view of the clause structure in Chinese is first presented, examining the so-called ‘complex sentences’ from a cognitive perspective. The consequence of this view is that the notion of ‘equipollent-framed language’ for Chinese can be abandoned and thus tidying up Talmy’s original typology. It is further argued that the constructional-cognitive view of Chinese captures the structural intuitions more appropriately than a traditional generative account, and that the motion-directional structure in Chinese has been constructionalized to the extent that individual verbs in the construction merge but produce a structure with more than their total properties.
Keywords: satellite-framed, catenative, motion-directional construction, equipollently-framed, constructionalization
Published online: 3 March 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1075/cogls.3.2.03fon
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Fong, Ronald
2017. Chinese Motion-Directional Construction: A Conceptual and Cognitive Analysis. Studies in Chinese Linguistics 38:2 ► pp. 119 ff. DOI logo

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