Theory of Communotion and the Evolution of Chinese Syntactic Properties

Zhongxin Dai

doi:10.14738/assrj.63.6346

Abstract

The unique syntactic properties of the Chinese language have been universally discussed among Chinese linguists, but the genotypic source of the properties has rarely been explored. This article attempted to explore the source from human communicative notion (communotion). Communotion is the intended notion emerging in the interlocutor’s mind in the context of communication, and impelling him to struggle to express with whatever tool is available. The syntactic properties of human particular languages have evolved from the immanent relationships between the elements in the communotion. This article identifies five design principles underlying the heterogeneous transduction from the hierarchical notional relationships in the communotion to the hierarchical syntactic structures in the Chinese language: Situatedness, Theme Depiction, Dynamic Focalization, Phrase-based Construction and Word Order. The incongruity between the syntactic properties of the Chinese language and other languages is caused by the diversity of the sociocultural conventional verbalization in the realization of the expression of the communotion.

Highlights

It is well known that the syntactic structures of the Chinese language are characterized by such unique properties as topic-prominence, run-on syntactic structures, four-character idiomatic expressions and flexible word order
The domains of language grammar that Western grammarians have been concerned about have historically never become salient issues. Those modern Chinese linguists reviewed by Shen [1] argued that Western theories in general linguistics had not taken into account the facts and laws of the Chinese language, and, did not apply to Chinese
The source, the basic structures, the mechanism and the generation of human communotion are universal to mankind

Summary

Introduction

It is well known that the syntactic structures of the Chinese language are characterized by such unique properties as topic-prominence, run-on syntactic structures, four-character idiomatic expressions and flexible word order. The domains of language grammar that Western grammarians have been concerned about have historically never become salient issues Those modern Chinese linguists reviewed by Shen [1] argued that Western theories in general linguistics had not taken into account the facts and laws of the Chinese language, and, did not apply to Chinese. They thought that grammarians in China had overly followed the Western theoretical framework, intentionally accommodated to the Western theoretical parameters, and not taken into account the basic properties of the Chinese language. They contended that theories should always come from practice, and that theories on the grammar of the Chinese language should have been based on the investigation of the

Methods

Conclusion