METAPHORICAL EXTENSIONS IN SEMANTIC CHANGE: A case study of zi nbin - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

METAPHORICAL EXTENSIONS IN SEMANTIC CHANGE: A case study of zài nàbiān construction in spoken Taiwan Mandarin Hsiao-Ling Hsu and Huei-Ling Lai National Chengchi University, Taiwan Presented at The 21st Chinese Lexical Semantics Workshop (CLSW2020), City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. May 28-30, 2020

Intr Introduction oduction ■ Biq (2007) : ■ Zài nàbiān is significantly frequent in spoken Taiwan Mandarin. ■ Zài nàbiān , as a necessary component, refers to a place distal to a deitic center ■ Zài nàbiān in the zài nàbiān +VP construction, as an unnecessary component, does not refer to a place distal to a deictic center, but to emphasize an event or to keep a detached stance towards an event. ■ This detached/negative attitude emerges from the meaning of “ 那 nà (‘that’)”, which refers to an entity distal to a deictic center. 2

Intr Introduction oduction ■ Jiang (2014) : ■ Two corpora: – Spoken: NCCU Corpus of Spoken Taiwan Mandarin (Chui & Lai, 2008) – Written: Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Modern Chinese ■ Non-place-denoting zài nàbiān in spoken Mandarin would be better accounted for in terms of past imperfectivity (Comrie,1976:24). 3

Intr Introduction oduction ■ Biq (2007) versus Jiang (2014) – They focus on different aspects of non-place-denoting zài nàbiān : the former on the pragmatic aspect and the latter on the grammatical and semantic aspect. ■ The usage of zài nàbiān in spoken discourse can be better captured if the grammatical, semantic and pragmatic aspects are analyzed at the same time. 4

Intr Introduction oduction ■ Our aim to tease out the usage patterns of zài nàbiān in terms of the grammatical functions of zài and the semantic types and pragmatic uses of nàbiān in the two types of zài nàbiān 5

The Theoretical oretical Ba Back ckgr ground ound Discour Discourse app se approach t oach to demonstrativ o demonstratives i es in Ma n Mand ndari arin n (T (Tao, 1 ao, 1999) 999) ■ In Chinese, zhè and ná are usually viewed as contrasting spatial distance, with the speaker at the center. – Xiandan Hanyu Babai Ci (Lu et al, 1981): ■ zhè refers to things that are close to the speaker ■ ná refers to things that are far from the speaker ■ Tao (1999) explores the distributions of demonstratives zhè and ná in conversational discourse and proposes that the spatial distance theory is not always the case for the use of zhè and ná . 6

The Theoretical oretical Ba Back ckgr ground ound Discour Discourse app se approach t oach to demonstrativ o demonstratives i es in Ma n Mand ndari arin n (T (Tao, ao, 1999: 999:76-77) Seman emantic ic Types pes of Ref eferenc erence e De Definition inition Ex Example ple 我那天去拿信。 Temporal reference Refer to the time 你來這裡做什麼？ Spatial reference Refer to the place 我明天就穿這件。 Personal reference Concerning body parts or personal belongings of the speaker 這個人；這個程序 Ordinary reference Refer to human/non-human entities 我很少看到警察抓了一個外國 Hypothetical reference The entity being referred to is 人，在那要他的身分證。 hypothetical and non-specific 7

The Theoretical oretical Ba Back ckgr ground ound Di Discour scourse se ap appr proach oach to o de demonstrati monstratives es in in Ma Mand ndar arin in (T (Tao, ao, 1999:7 999:77-78) 78) Usa sage ge ty type pes s of dem emons onstrati trative e in Definition De inition Ex Example ple disc scour urse se (Himm mmelma elmann nn, , 1994) 94) 他當時坐在那邊。 Situational use Referring to to an entity present in utterance situation. 他那麽做是為什麼？ Discourse/Textual use Referring to a proposition/ event in the discourse; text reference or extended reference 他昨天來買了一朵花。 Tracking use Referring back to introduced 那朵花他送給了他媽媽。 specific referent Anaphoric or co-referential 按照這個正常程序？ Recognational use Referent are introduced with a demonstrative to show degrees of uncertainty 8

Theoretical Background zai (Wang, 2015) ■ Comrie (1976) : continuous aspect can be further divided into progressive and nonprogressive. ■ Following Comrie(1976): zai can denote nonprogressive continuous state ( 狀態持續 ) and progressive activity ( 動作進行 ). ■ In Chinese, zài is a progressive marker (Tang, 2016; cf. Wang, 2015 ). 9

Theoretical Background Construction Grammar ■ The major principle of constructionist approaches is to view all linguistic items no matter how small or abstract as pairings of form and function (Goldberg, 1995). ■ Pairings of form and function are treated as ‘constructions’ which serve as building blocks of languages. ■ Constructions comprise inheritance networks via inheritance links. ■ Four major types of inheritance links are proposed to capture the relations between constructions (Goldberg, 1995):  polysemy links (I P )  metaphorical extension links (I M )  subpart links(I S )  instance link(I I ) 10

Theoretical Background Construction Grammar ■ In this present study, only metaphorical extension inheritance links are discussed, since they are closely related to the emergence of the non-place- denoting usage zài nàbiān . ■ Metaphorical extension links capture the metaphorical mapping between two constructions, as demonstrated in the following instances in Goldberg (1995:88). – (9) is inherited from (8) the cause-motion construction with the metaphorical extension inheritance link: change of location is change of state. (9) Joe kicked the bottle into the yard. (8) Joe kicked Bob black and blue. 11

Method Method ■ Corpus: Taiwan Mandarin Corpus – TalkBank, https://ca.talkbank.org/access/TaiwanMandarin.html Chui, Kawai, Huei-ling Lai, and Hui-Chen Chan. 2017. The Taiwan Spoken Chinese Corpus. In Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistic , ed. by Rint Sybesma, pp. 257-259. Boston, USA: Brill. – 36 spontaneous face-to-face conversations 12

Met Method hod ■ Instances of zài nàbiān are extracted from the corpus along with the sufficient and necessary context (preceding and following turns) which is considered important information for the analysis. ■ According to the test that whether a referent can be identified, zài nàbiān is categorized into two groups : – the place-denoting zài nàbiān – the non-place-denoting zài nàbiān ■ Each usage is further analyzed based on the grammatical function of zài , the semantic type (Tao, 1999) and the pragmatic use (Himmelmann,1996) of nàbiān . 13

Resu esults lts The distribution of place-denoting zài nàbiān and non-place-denoting zài nàbiān in Taiwan Mandarin Corpus Types Number of tokens Place-denoting zài nàbiān 61 (50.83%) Non-place-denoting zài nàbiān 59 (49.17%) Total 120 (100%) 14

Resu esults lts pl place ace-deno denoting ting zài nàbiān ■ Place-denoting zài nàbiān – Referents: mentioned place ( 九份、桌子、回收桶、我斜後方 … ) – Necessary component of the utterances ■ zài is a locative preposition ■ Semantic type of nàbiān : spatial reference (100%, n=61) ■ Pragmatic use of nàbiān : tracking use (93.4%, n=57), situational use (6.6%, n=4) 15

Resu esults lts pl place ace-deno denoting ting zài nàbiān 16

Resu esults lts non-place-denoting zài nàbiān ■ Non-place-denoting zài nàbiān – Referents: cannot be identified – Not a necessary component of the utterances ■ zài in non-place-denoting zài nàbiān + VP serves as an aspect marker indicating the VP is a progressive event or a continuous state ■ Semantic function of nàbiān : hypothetical reference (100%, n=59) ■ Pragmatic function of nàbiān : attitudinal use (100%, n=59) 17

Resu esults lts non-place-denoting zài nàbiān 18

Resu esults lts non-place-denoting zài nàbiān 19

Dis Discussion cussion ■ With regard to the indexicality of the deictic expression zài nàbiān in our data from spoken Taiwan Mandarin – the indexical ground of place-denoting nàbiān is physically based – the indexical ground of non-place-denoting nàbiān is psychological in nature, which conveys ‘psychologically’ distal distance toward that event ■ The place-denoting zài nàbiān construction is used to make reference to mentioned places in the context. ■ The non-place-denoting zài nàbiān + VP construction is used to express speakers’ negative/disfavored attitude toward an ongoing event or a continuous state. 20

Dis Discussion cussion ■ It is noteworthy that the development from place-denoting usage to non-place-denoting usage in spoken discourse demonstrates the mechanism of semantic extension. ■ The emergent non-place-denoting usage is developed from the conceptually concrete domains to less concrete domains: from the spatial zài to temporal (aspectual) zài , and from the concrete physical distance to the abstract psychological distance. 21

Dis Discussion cussion ■ The notions of metaphorical extension inheritance links (Goldberg, 1995). ■ The non-place-denoting usage is developed/emerged from the central deictic construction to psychological deictic construction. Aspectual marker 22