Edited by Dingfang Shu, Hui Zhang and Lifei Zhang
[Human Cognitive Processing 67] 2019
► pp. 95–120
The BA construction, also known as the ‘disposal’ construction, is a morphosyntactic phenomenon unique to the Chinese language. Based on the findings of a collexeme analysis of corpus data and in line with subjectification proposed by Langacker, we provide evidence that the BA-pattern and the BA-GE-pattern constitute different constructions and we uncover the dynamic processes of meaning change regarding the concept of ‘disposal’ in the two constructions. The BA construction does indeed focus on the description of disposal events, whereas, in the BA-GE construction, the objective meaning of ‘disposal’ is backgrounded and the speaker’s subjective perspective becomes foregrounded. Such changes in conceptual construal demonstrate the importance of subjectification, a crucial cognitive tool in the construction of meaning and syntactic structure.