Endurant vs Perdurant: Ontological Motivation for Language Variations

30th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation, PACLIC 2016, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 28-30 October 2016Modern ontology focuses on the shared structure of knowledge representation and sheds light on underling motivations of human conceptual structure. This paper addresses the issue of whether ontological structures are linguistically represented, and whether such conceptual underpinning of linguistic representation may motivate language variations. Integrating our recent work showing that the most fundamental endurant vs. perdurant ontological dichotomy is grammaticalized in Chinese and on comparable corpus based studies of variations of Chinese, I will explore the possibilit ENGLy that this basic conceptual dichotomy may in fact provide the motivation of changes of perspectives that underlies language variations. I will also discuss possible implication this approach has in accounting for other language changes and variations such as light verb's argument taking, incorporation, loss of case/agreement, and English -er/-ee asymmetry. In the process, the will resolve three linguistic puzzles and eventually show that the endurant/perdurant dichotomy may in fact be the conceptual basis of the hitherto undefined +N (i.e. nouny) vs. +V (i.e. verby) features prevalent in linguistics. Based on this proposal, the variations involving various types of denominalization and deverbalization can be accounted for.Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies2016-2017 > Academic research: refereed > Refereed conference paperbcw

Cross-strait Variations on Two Near-synonymous Loanwords xie2shang1 and tan2pan4: A Corpus-based Comparative Study

This study attempts to investigate cross-strait variations on two typical synonymous loanwords in Chinese, i.e. xie2shang1 and tan2pan4, drawn on MARVS theory. Through a comparative analysis, the study found some distributional, eventual, and contextual similarities and differences across Taiwan and Mainland Mandarin. Compared with the underused tan2pan4, xie2shang1 is significantly overused in Taiwan Mandarin and vice versa in Mainland Mandarin. Additionally, though both words can refer to an inchoative process in Mainland and Taiwan Mandarin, the starting point for xie2shang1 in Mainland Mandarin is somewhat blurring compared with the usage in Taiwan Mandarin. Further on, in Taiwan Mandarin, tan2pan4 can be used in economic and diplomatic contexts, while xie2shang1 is used almost exclusively in political contexts. In Mainland Mandarin, however, the two words can be used in a hybrid manner within political contexts; moreover, tan2pan4 is prominently used in diplomatic contexts with less reference to economic activities, while xie2sahng1 can be found in both political and legal contexts, emphasizing a role of mediation.Comment: To appear in PACLIC 2022. 10 pages, 5 figures, 5 table

Cross-sortal Predication and Polysemy

Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studie