A Cognitive Grammar Approach to a Complex Verb Construction in Mandarin Chinese “V-O-V de X”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32350/llr.121.02Keywords:
VOVdeX construction, semantic categories, corpus-based analysis, Mandarin Chinese grammar, descriptive–commentary–causative typesAbstract
This study investigates the semantic categories of the Mandarin Chinese “VOVdeX” construction based on 2,410 corpus instances collected from the BCC and CCL corpora. Adopting a corpus-based Cognitive Grammar approach, it examines the semantic relationship between the verb-object sequence (VO) and the verb-complement sequence (VdeX). The findings reveal three major semantic types: descriptive, commentary, and causative. In the descriptive type, VdeX characterizes a state or condition associated with the event expressed by VO. In the commentary type, VdeX conveys the speaker’s evaluative judgment of the event. In the causative type, VdeX denotes a result brought about by the action encoded in VO. These findings demonstrate that the construction forms a systematic semantic network and highlights the role of subjectivity in meaning construction. The research contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of Mandarin Chinese verb-copying constructions.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Shakal Khan Korai, Liu Jiaxin, Marvi Korai, Samaira Narejo
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