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Article published In:
Review of Cognitive Linguistics
Vol. 21:2 (2023) ► pp.351–376

Collostructional analysis on Chinese modal verb construction neng bu neng + VP

| Northeast Normal University
| Beijing Foreign Studies University
This paper aims to investigate the meanings of Chinese neng (modal verb) bu (negative word) neng (modal verb) + VP construction and explores the meaning motivations behind them. The present paper employs the method of collostructional analysis, R software and BLCU Corpus Center
(BCC) are used to process the linguistic data. It is found that the prototypical meaning of the target construction is “let something (not) happen or let someone (not) do something” with the sense of negotiation and interaction and its extensional meanings include “getting an expected result”, “continuation”, “obtaining”, “specific actions containing causation, motion, communication, vision, life, and mental activities”. The meaning motivations of the construction lie in the force experience of human from his/her interaction with the outside world, and in the semantic interaction of its constituent words neng and bu.
Keywords: neng bu neng + VP, collostructional analysis, prototypical meaning, extensional meaning
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
  • 3.Theoretical framework
    • 3.1Inheritance construction network
    • 3.2Two directions of motivations exploration
      • 3.2.1External motivation: Force dynamic theory
      • 3.2.2Internal motivation: Construal theory
  • 4.Research design
  • 5.Results and discussion
    • 5.1Meaning analysis
      • 5.1.1Analysis of high-frequency co-occurrence verbs in neng bu neng + VP
      • 5.1.2Analysis of the prototypical meaning of neng bu neng + VP
      • 5.1.3Analysis of the extensional meanings of neng bu neng + VP construction
        • i.Verbs of indicating achieving results
        • ii.Verbs of causation with specific actions
        • iii.Verbs of obtaining actions
        • iv.Verbs of communication
        • v.Verbs of motion
        • vi.Verbs of continuing
        • vii.Verbs of life
        • viii.Verbs of vision
        • ix.Verbs of mentality
    • 5.2Motivations of the prototypical meaning of neng bu neng + VP
      • 5.2.1External motivation
      • 5.2.2Internal motivation
    • 5.3Motivations exploration and meaning analysis
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 4 April 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00142.sha
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