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Article published In:
Studies in Language
Vol. 42:4 (2018) ► pp.886–922

The constructionalization and constructional change of noncanonical V-NP expressions in Mandarin Chinese

| Zhejiang Normal University
| Zhejiang University

This paper investigates the process of constructionalization and constructional change of apparently noncanonical yet highly frequent V-NP expressions in Mandarin Chinese, which exist in other languages as well (e.g., Southeast Asian languages and African languages). A corpus-based survey of 20 frequently used monosyllabic verbs shows that both the token and the type frequency of the noncanonical V-NP expressions have on the whole been increasing throughout the history of the Chinese language. From a constructional perspective, it is proposed that the noncanonical V-NP structure has gone through a process of grammatical constructionalization and constructional change (Traugott & Trousdale 2013), which involves diachronic changes in productivity, schematicity and compositionality and which is manifested in the increasing number of the semantic types of postverbal NPs.

Keywords: Chinese, constructionalization, constructional change, productivity, schematicity, compositionality
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Construction and constructionalization
  • 3.Evolutionary properties of noncanonical V-NP construction
    • 3.1High productivity
    • 3.2High schematicity
    • 3.3Low compositionality
  • 4.Constructionalization and constructional change of noncanonical V-NP constructions and their expansion types
    • 4.1Extension Type I
    • 4.2Extension type II
    • 4.3Extension type III
    • 4.4Extension type IV
  • 5.Diachronic evolution of the NPs in noncanonical V-NP construction
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 4 February 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.17001.li
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