Mandarin Verbs Research Articles

The colexification of vision and cognition in Mandarin: controlled activity surpasses uncontrolled experience

Abstract Given the colexification of perception and cognition, Georgakopoulos et al. (2022. Universal and macro-areal patterns in the lexicon: A case-study in the perception-cognition domain. Linguistic Typology 26(2). 439–487) claim that uncontrolled experience rather than controlled activity has a direct linkage to cognition. To test whether this is a universal tendency, this study conducts a contrastive behavioral profile analysis of two basic vision verbs in Mandarin: kàn, a controlled activity verb, and jiàn, an uncontrolled experience verb. The results show that (i) both kàn and jiàn colexify visual activity and cognitive senses; (ii) kàn is able to express a wider range of cognitive meanings, i.e., know, understand, and think, whereas jiàn only extends into know; and (iii) visual and cognitive meanings have more proximal relationships in the colexification pattern of kàn than that of jiàn. The study confirms the universality of the colexification between vision and cognition while providing counterexamples to the above-mentioned large data-based findings. Accordingly, a dichotomy of controlled activity versus uncontrolled experience is proposed for the colexification of vision and cognition in cognitive typology.

Language transfer in tense acquisition: new evidence from English learning Chinese adolescents

Abstract Distinct from English, Mandarin verbs are not inflected to encode Past Tense, but perfective aspect is typically marked by aspectual markers -le and -guo. Moreover, resultative verb compounds are often viewed as accomplishment verbs, denoting telicity of an event. This study attempts to examine whether such linguistic properties transfer to the acquisition of English. We tested 22 English learning Chinese adolescents in two experiments, respectively using a Story Restatements Task and an Elicited Production Task. Overall, the experiments generated three major findings. First, the participants marked irregular verbs 13 % higher than regular ones. Second, the participants used bare verbs to express English Past Tense 12 % of the situations. Third, the participants adopted Mandarin-like RVCs to denote English Past Tense 10 % of the cases. Taken together, the findings indicate that besides morphophonological transfer, English learning Chinese adolescents adopt Mandarin word-formation rules to encode English Past Tense, which is new evidence of cross-linguistic transfer. We discuss the implications of our findings.

A self-paced reading study of context effects in the processing of aspectual verbs in Mandarin

Abstract Research in the past few years has investigated the semantic complexity of expressions with aspectual verbs followed by entity-denoting complements such as finish the book that led to processing costs cross-linguistically. The Structured Individual Hypothesis (SIH) proposes that aspectual verbs lexically encode a function whose value (dimension) must be resolved. This ambiguity resolution is hypothesized to occur at the verb’s complement, where a specific dimension is selected based on context (Piñango & Deo, 2016). In light of the critical role of the context in SIH, recent research (Lai et al., 2023; Lai & Piñango, 2019) has investigated how the interpretations of sentences with aspectual verbs were affected by biased contexts in an offline sentence acceptability judgment study and an online eye-tracking study. However, results of the two studies showed that biased contexts disambiguated the interpretations of aspectual verb expressions offline while processing costs in biased contexts were not found to attenuate costs in real time. The reason why conflicting results were found offline versus online and the timecourse of context effects remain unclear, but in our view it may be due to pragmatic contexts, i.e., descriptions of the utterance context used to infer the salient reading of the utterance. We used grammatical contexts – two classes of adverbs – in a self-paced reading study to examine context effects for sentences with aspectual verbs in Mandarin. We found that biased grammatical contexts not only affected the interpretations in the offline task, but crucially facilitated processing in the online experiment as well. We conclude that biased grammatical contexts predetermine the interpretations of aspectual verb expressions immediately in real time.

A Chinese verb semantic feature dataset (CVFD).

Language is an advanced cognitive function of humans, and verbs play a crucial role in language. To understand how the human brain represents verbs, it is critical to analyze what knowledge humans have about verbs. Thus, several verb feature datasets have been developed in different languages such as English, Spanish, and German. However, there is still a lack of a dataset of Chinese verbs. In this study, we developed a semantic feature dataset of 1140 Chinese Mandarin verbs (CVFD) with 11 dimensions including verb familiarity, agentive subject, patient, action effector, perceptual modality, instrumentality, emotional valence, action imageability, action complexity, action intensity, and the usage scenario of action. We calculated the semantic features of each verb and the correlation between dimensions. We also compared the difference between action, mental, and other verbs and gave some examples about how to use CVFD to classify verbs according to different dimensions. Finally, we discussed the potential applications of CVFD in the fields of neuroscience, psycholinguistics, cultural differences, and artificial intelligence. All the data can be found at https://osf.io/pv29z/ .

Learning the Lexical Semantics of Mandarin Monomorphemic State-Change Verbs by English-Speaking Learners of Mandarin Chinese

Languages vary systematically in how semantic information is “packaged” in verbs and verb-related constructions. Mandarin Chinese contrasts typologically with English in its lexicalization of state change. Most Mandarin monomorphemic verbs are moot about or imply a state change, whereas many English monomorphemic verbs (e.g., kill, break) entail the fulfillment of a state change. Recent studies suggest that Mandarin monomorphemic verbs form a continuum in the strength of state-change implicature. State-change verbs have been found difficult for first language (L1) learners. This study reports two experiments that investigate the lexical semantic knowledge of Mandarin monomorphemic implied or moot state-change verbs by intermediate (N = 19, mean age 21) and advanced (N = 12, mean age 21) English-speaking second language (L2) learners of Mandarin Chinese. The results reveal L2 learners’ general preference for the state-change interpretation for the monomorphemic verbs and their limited sensitivity to the nuanced strength of state-change implicature in the Mandarin verbs. Typological differences in the lexicalization of state change are argued to contribute to the difficulties in L2 learning of the lexical semantics in the semantic domain of state change in Mandarin.

PENERAPAN “MEDIA PEMBELAJARAN VIDEOSRIBE” UNTUK MENINGKATKAN KEMAMPUAN SISWA DALAM MENGINGAT KATA KERJA PADA SMP LKIA PONTIANAK

AbstractVideoScribe Learning Media is a method that can rely on two senses at once, namely thesense of sight and the sense of hearing. In the implementation of the teaching process, theuse of the video scribe method is very helpful for students in learning Mandarin nouns. Thepurpose of this study was to examine whether the video scribe method could improvestudents' ability to remember verbs in Mandarin. The author conducted a study in SMP 1Private LKIA Pontianak, with a number of students, namely 13 boys and 12 girls. Theresults obtained through the pretest and posttest The average student's initial test score is57.6%. After using the video scribe learning media, the average student final test scoreincreased to 82.4. The author uses the criteria for school completeness as the standard ofcompleteness, which is 70. Based on the standard of school completeness scores, afterusing the video scribe learning media, the percentage of students who complete the finaltest is 88%. This indicates that the teaching method taught is quite interesting and canstrengthen students' focus in learning Mandarin.Keywords: Learning Media Verbs VideoScribe the ability to remember

Defective incorporating verbs in Mandarin

Abstract This paper identifies a type of noun incorporation in which the verb and a nominal are combined as early saturation of the verb, in contrast to early restriction, which is seen in the familiar type of noun incorporation. Two types of V-V resultative constructions in Mandarin Chinese are compared: the agent-oriented one and the patient-oriented one. The semantic grouping effects of the first verb and the post-verbal nominal of an agent-oriented type show that they are local to each other in their base-positions. But unlike in the patient-oriented one, the first verb in the construction shows a weak reachability. The defectiveness of the verb is parallel to that of an incorporated nominal in the familiar type of noun incorporation: e.g. no modification and no anaphoric linking to a proform. The paper argues that the first verb in the agent-oriented resultative construction and the post-verbal nominal, which can be a full-fledged referential nominal, undergo a type of noun incorporation parallel to the familiar type. In such noun incorporation, instead of the nominal, it is the verb that exhibits root-like properties. Such properties are viewed as a consequence of an early combination of a verb and a nominal, before each of them takes an event-argument, in a neo-Davisonian semantic perspective.

Reactivation of unaccusative and unergative verbs in Mandarin

Abstract Intransitives can be classified into two subclasses: unaccusative verbs and unergative verbs. According to the Unaccusative Hypothesis, the difference between unaccusatives and unergatives lies in where the single argument is generated in the underlying syntactic structure. Subjects of unaccusative verbs are base-generated in the object position and moved to the subject positions. Subjects of unergative verbs, however, are external and thus are not resulted from arguments moving from the object position. If the Unaccusative Hypothesis is correct, a trace is left at the original place for unaccusative verbs when movement occurs but no trace for unergative verbs. Friedmann et al. (2008) used the cross-modal lexical priming paradigm to examine the Unaccusative Hypothesis but their results could only lend limited support for the Unaccusative Hypothesis. Since the argument of Mandarin unaccusative verbs can occur preverbally and postverbally, it offers us a balanced testing ground to re-examine reactivation during sentence comprehension. Results of the current study lend support for the Unaccusative Hypothesis. When the argument occurred preverbally, a V-shaped line was observed. An inverted V-shaped line was observed when the argument occurred postverbally. For unergative verbs, the line showed a decay of reactivation.

Potentials for grammaticalization

Abstract This paper discusses the grammaticalization of motion verbs in Mandarin. A class of motion verbs in Mandarin that regularly appears at either V1 or V2 position in the V1+V2 construction is only grammaticalized at the V2 position, where the verb becomes a directional complement. We provide a cognitive semantic account and propose a new hypothesis that we call the syntactic position and event type sensitivity hypothesis in grammaticalization. We analyze corpus data across five historical stages for 11 simplex directional complements. The analysis draws on Talmy’s macro-event theory and Lehmann’s grammaticalization parameters. It is concluded that motion verbs at the V1 position are most likely to have agentive subjects, which foregrounds the idea of motion in V1, while V2 focuses on the Agent’s purpose. Motion verbs at V2 are relatively more likely to have non-agentive subjects, which foregrounds the Path element in V2 and complements the action of V1, rather than the purpose of the Agent. What triggers the grammaticalization of the V2 is the foregrounding of the Path element in V2, which complements the action of V1, and its non-agentive subject.

신조어 동사의 의미역 분석

This study is about the thematic structure of Mandarin verb neologism. It focuses on grasping the recent tendency of Mandarin verb neologisms by analyzing the theta role.<BR> The number of total data is 118, which were newly included in Modern Chinese Dictionary(7th edition). Mandarin verb neologisms have the highest percentages of ‘agent’ in the ‘monovalent verbs’ by classification based on semantic property. The second is ‘theme’, and the next is ‘sentient’. ‘Bivalent verbs’ has a high percentage of ‘agent’ in the subject position. The second is ‘theme’, and the next is ‘causer’. In the object position, ‘bivalent verbs’ has a high percentage of ‘patient’, the second is ‘result’, and the next is ‘range, relevant’, ect. Semi-bivalent verbs has a high percentage of ‘agent’, and the next is ‘sentient’ in the subject position. In the object position of preposition, it has a high percentage of ‘dative’, and the next is ‘target’ and ‘source’. In addition, we also analyzed the case of separable ‘Verb-Object’ verbs with objects.<BR> In conclusion, this paper analyzed the thematic role of neologism verbs and revealed the structural relationship of verbs.

Referentiality, individuation and incompletive readings

As an exception to Krifka’s (in: Bartsch, Benthem, Emde Boas,Semantics and contextual expression, CSLI Publications, Stanford, 1989) famous generalization that a quantized incremental theme always induces an event-homomorphic completive reading, Singh (Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 17(1): 469–479, 1991, Journal of East Asian Linguistics 3(2): 107–146, 1998) observes that in Hindi only quantized mass noun phrases entail a completive reading, but unexpectedly quantized count noun phrases can give rise to an incompletive reading. She proposes that count nouns can introduce a partial-affectedness thematic relation, whereas mass nouns introduce a total-affectedness thematic relation. With new data in Mandarin, instead of the count/mass distinction, I argue that referentiality of the direct object is a crucial factor, because incompletive readings are only felicitous with direct objects interpreted referentially for consumption verbs in Mandarin.

Effect of Mandarin Verb Network Strengthening Treatment (VNeST) in Mandarin-English bilinguals with aphasia: A single-case experimental design

ABSTRACT This study aimed to improve verb retrieval ability in Mandarin-English bilinguals with aphasia by adapting the Verb Network Strengthening Treatment (VNeST) into Mandarin Chinese. Two Mandarin-English bilingual patients with chronic post-stroke aphasia participated in this study via online conferencing system following a multiple-baseline design. Both of them completed a 10-week of Mandarin VNeST treatment, and were probed on verb retrieval ability in a sentence context in both languages. Response accuracy was analysed to investigate the treatment acquisition, within-language generalization, and cross-language generalization effects. Standardized language assessments in both languages were administered pre- and post-treatment to further examine generalization to other linguistic tasks. Error analysis was conducted to investigate the evolution of within- and cross-language errors. Both patients improved after training in Mandarin VNeST, and showed different patterns of within-language and cross-language generalizations. They also improved in a variety of standardized language tasks. Error analysis showed a decline in semantic errors over the course of treatment in both patients, with cross-linguistic errors showing a decrease during Mandarin probes and an increase during English probes in one of the patients. This study contributes to our current understanding of theories of bilingual verb processing, and provides treatment guidance in Mandarin-English bilinguals with aphasia.

A Longitudinal Study of the Acquisition of the Polysemous Verb 打 dǎ in Mandarin Chinese

Lexical ambiguity abounds in languages and multiple one-to-many form-function mappings create challenges for language learners. This study extends the theoretical approaches to the acquisition of polysemy to the Mandarin verb 打 dǎ, which is highly polysemous and among the earliest verbs in child speech. It analyzes longitudinal naturalistic data of nine children (1;05–3;10) from two Mandarin child speech corpora to explore the developmental trajectory of different senses of 打 dǎ and the role of input. The results support a continuous derivational and restricted monosemy approach: children initially extract a core feature of 打 dǎ, but only apply it in a restricted way, reflected in a small number of senses in a limited set of semantic domains and syntactic frames, revealing an early preference for initial unambiguous form-meaning mappings. Mandarin-speaking children’s production mirrors the semantic and syntactic distribution of the input, supporting the usage-based approach to the acquisition of polysemy that meaning is derived from the confluence of lexical and syntactic cues in the usage patterns in the input. Our research is the first longitudinal study of the emergence and development of polysemous verbs in Mandarin and has pedagogical implications for teaching Mandarin as a second language.

신조어 동사의 연어 관계 고찰

신조어 동사의 연어 관계 고찰

언어유형론적 관점에서 본 중국어 방언의 결과상/진행상 표지의 변이 유형과 발전 기제 : 동사에 후행하는 ‘着’류와 ‘在’류 형식을 중심으로

In this paper, we have investigated the variations of resultative and progressive aspect makers in 153 Chinese dialects corresponding to ‘zhe(着)’ and ‘zai(在)’ following the verbs in Mandarin. This study shows that there are various asymmetrical phenomena of ‘zhe(着)’ and ‘zai(在)’ in terms of their distributions, functions or usage overlapping, and that there are many different types of aspectual systems in different dialects: the same form can function as a resultative aspect or a progressive aspect while several different forms in a dialect can have the same aspectual function.BR In Chinese dialects, ‘zhe(着)’-type markers commonly indicate a state resulting from a preceding action, referred to as ‘resultative aspect’. They are grammaticalized from the verbal complement, and in many Chinese dialects ‘zhe(着)’-type markers are developed to progressive aspect makers through metaphoric semantic expansion. It’s why many dialects including Mandarin have ‘zhe(着)’-type markers indicating stative resultative meaning and active progressive meaning.BR In many Chinese dialects, ‘zai(在)’-type markers following verbs denote the state resulting from action. In some dialects, there may be cases that ‘zai(在)’-type markers are not followed by the locative phrases. It shows that ‘zai(在)’ can be regarded as an resultative aspect maker functionally equivalent to ‘zhe(着)’. In Mandarin, “Zai chifan ne(在吃饭呢)” and “Chi zhe fan ne(吃着饭呢)” have similar aspectual meanings which are layered into the same aspectual category through the grammaticalization process.BR In Chinese dialects, ‘zhe(着)’-type markers which are grammaticalized from the verb with the meaning of ‘attachment’ always follow verbs, whereas ‘zai(在)’-type markers can either precede verbs or follow verbs. It is due to the structural and semantic constraints. Both ‘zhe(着)’ and ‘zai(在)’ preceded by a verb follows the Principle of Temporal Sequence. But ‘zai(在)’ preceding a verb is grammaticalized from the verb that took the whole verb phrase as its object, while ‘zhe(着)’ can not have such a structural origin.BR In this paper, we have classified and analyzed the various aspectual types and systems of ‘zhe(着)’ and ‘zai(在)’ in Chinese dialects. This study on the resultative aspect and progressive aspect with empirical evidence and theoretical explanation shows that the development of the Chinese aspectual system has been following the universal tendency of human language evolution along the path of grammaticalization of aspect markers.

Referentiality and incompletive reading in Mandarin

As an exception to Krifka’s (1989) famous generalization that a quantized incremental theme always induces an event-homomorphic completive reading, Singh (1991, 1998) observes that in Hindi only the quantized mass noun phrases as the incremental theme entails a completive reading, but unexpectedly quantized count nouns phrases can have an incompletive reading. She proposes that count nouns can introduce a partial thematic relation, whereas mass nouns introduce a total thematic relation. With new data in Mandarin, instead of the mass/count distinction, I argue that referentiality is the crucial factor because the non-culmination readings are only felicitous with the referential objects for consumption verbs in Mandarin.

Mandarin Chinese Verbs as Verbal Items in Uyghur Mixed Verbs

This paper explores the pattern by which Mandarin Chinese verbs are used in Uyghur-Mandarin code-switching by native Uyghur speakers. In a number of language contact situations with similar verb mixing, foreign verbal items have been argued to be treated as nominal in the host language. However, I argue based on examples from personal communications with Uyghur speakers and my own elicitations that Mandarin verbs are still treated as a verbal category by Uyghur speakers for four reasons: (1) Mandarin verbs project their argument structure in Uyghur; (2) the Mandarin perfective aspectual particle le is uniquely included with a subset of Mandarin verbs; (3) the Uyghur verbalizing marker -la cannot attach to Mandarin verbs; and (4) the Uyghur accusative case marker -ni cannot attach to Mandarin verbs. The paper also discusses why it is not possible for Mandarin verbs to inflect with Uyghur morphology, and proposes a specific constraint on inflecting foreign verbs embedded in rich inflectional languages. The paper also poses the question of whether the availability of multiple light verbs to combine with foreign verbs correlates with the verbal status of foreign verbs in the host language.

Psych verbs, the linking problem, and the acquisition of language

In acquiring language, children must learn to appropriately place the different participants of an event (e.g., causal agent, affected entity) into the correct syntactic positions (e.g., subject, object) so that listeners will know who did what to whom. While many of these mappings can be characterized by broad generalizations, both within and across languages (e.g., semantic agents tend to be mapped onto syntactic subjects), not all verbs fit neatly into these generalizations. One particularly striking example is verbs of psychological state: The experiencer of the state can appear as either the subject (Agnes fears/hates/loves Bartholomew) or the direct object (Agnes frightens/angers/delights Bartholomew). The present studies explore whether this apparent variability in subject/object mapping may actually result from differences in these verbs’ underlying meanings. Specifically, we suggest that verbs like fear describe a habitual attitude towards some entity whereas verbs like frighten describe an externally caused emotional episode. We find that this distinction systematically characterizes verbs in English, Mandarin, and Korean. This pattern is generalized to novel verbs by adults in English, Japanese, and Russian, and even by English-speaking children who are just beginning to acquire psych verbs. This results support a broad role for systematic mappings between semantics and syntax in language acquisition.

Parametric variations in Mandarin and English denominal verb derivation

There are three major asymmetries recognized between Mandarin and English denominal verbs (hereafter DNV): typological, aspectual and quantitative. These asymmetries receive a plausible account on the assumption that Mandarin DNVs are derived under syntactic constraints while the derivation of English DNVs is syntax-free. The different derivational mechanisms for Mandarin and English DNVs correlate with the different functions of zero morphemes in the two languages. To spell out the correlation, we posit three parameters in word derivation: the Rule Parameter (i.e., word formation is governed either morphologically or syntactically), the Morpheme Parameter (i.e., a certain kind of word derivation utilizes, in addition to a base form, either a full morpheme or a zero morpheme) and the Zero Morpheme Parameter (i.e., zero morphemes are geared to either syntactic or morphological operations in a given language). These parameters are assumedly set in such a way that DNV derivation in Mandarin is assigned to syntax but that in English to morphology.

Representation of Polysemy in Mandarin Verbs: Chī, Dǎ, and Xǐ

This paper reports the findings from a semantic judgment priming task aimed at examining how senses of three semantically complex Mandarin verbs chī ‘eat’, dǎ ‘hit’, and xǐ ‘wash’ are stored in the mental lexicon. In the experiment, the prime stimuli belonged to the basic senses of the three critical polysemous verbs. Three target conditions, that is, verb phrases with the same basic senses (e.g. chī niupai ‘to eat steak’), closely related senses (e.g. chī wěiya ‘to attend a year-end party’), and distantly related senses (e.g. chī lǎoběn ‘to live on one’s own fat’), were prepared to test whether processing patterns varied for different types of extended senses within a polysemous verb. The results indicate linearly decreasing priming effects for senses moving from the core senses, through closely related senses, to distantly related senses. These effects conflict with the separate-entry view and provide evidence for a shared core representation among polysemous senses.