Conceptual Manipulation and Semantic Distinctions in Mandarin Verb Complements: The Contrast between shàng and dào

Abstract

This study investigates the lexicalization of spatial and aspectual components incorporated in Mandarin verb complements (VCs hereafter) shàng ‘up’ and dào ‘arrive’. The verb complement in Mandarin is well-known as the second verbal element in VV construction. Traditionally, V-shàng and V-dào are categorized as ‘directional complements’ and ‘phase complements’ respectively (Chao 1968; Li and Thompson 1981). Both VCs shàng and dào, originally functioning as a main verb (Gao 1995), are similar to the counterpart ‘up/on/above/over’ and ‘arrive/ reach’ in English; they have various usages, such as in verb phrases, and prepositional phrases, for example. Although there is no doubt that shàng and dào are poly-functional, it seems that there is no agreement on to what extent particular uses are related to one another. Most of the previous studies focus on the spatial meanings lexicalized in noun phrases and postpositions; they provide explanations based on a metaphorical approach or cultural values. However, such accounts cannot entirely explain the main function of the post-verbal comple- ments shàng and dào in VV construction. In this paper, I explore the subtle distinctions between the satellites shàng and dào, and provide an explanatory account for their seemingly diverse functions from a cognitive approach. Moreover, this paper aims to offer another perspective on the conceptual properties of spatial and aspectual notions embodied in these two verb complements, and verify evidence that Mandarin treats five framing events as a single conceptual entity. The organization of this paper is as follows. A brief literature review and the theoretical framework are presented in section 1. In section 2, the data involved the verb complements shàng and dào are introduced. In section 3, based on Talmy’s (2000) framework and framing event types, I discuss several examples and account for how aspectual and spatial concepts are explicitly expressed in shàng and dào regarding different framing event types. Section 4 shows a summary of findings and conclusion.