A corpus-based study on semantic and cognitive features of bei sentences in Mandarin Chinese

Author:

Xie Yonghui1,Niu Ruochen1,Liu Haitao2

Affiliation:

1. Faculty of Linguistic Sciences , Beijing Language and Culture University , Beijing , China

2. College of Foreign Languages and Literature , Fudan University , Shanghai , China

Abstract

Abstract Bei sentences in Mandarin Chinese with SOV word order have attracted extensive interest. However, their semantic features lacked quantitative evidence and their cognitive features received insufficient attention. Therefore, the current study aims to quantitatively investigate the semantic and cognitive features through the analysis of nine annotated factors in a corpus. The results regarding bei sentences show that (i) subjects exhibit a tendency to be definite and animate; non-adversative verbs have gained popularity over time, and intransitive verbs are capable of taking objects; (ii) subject relations tend to be long, implying heavy cognitive load, whereas the dependencies governed by subjects are often short, suggesting light cognitive load; and (iii) certain semantic factors significantly impact cognitive factors; for instance, animate subjects tend to govern shorter dependencies. Overall, our study provides empirical support for the semantic features of bei sentences and reveals their cognitive features using dependency distance.

Funder

Innovative Practice Project of Beijing Language and Culture University Education Foundation

MOE Project of Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Universities in China

Science Foundation of Beijing Language and Culture University

Publisher

Walter de Gruyter GmbH

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3. Branigan, Holly P., Martin J. Pickering & Mikihiro Tanaka. 2008. Contributions of animacy to grammatical function assignment and word order during production. Lingua 118(2). 172–189. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2007.02.003.

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