Exploring recurrent frames in written Chinese

Abstract

Patterning in frames (i.e., discontinuous word sequences with at least one variable slot) involves both syntagmatic co-occurrences and paradigmatic variations, and this has received considerable attention in phraseological research. However, few studies have attempted to extract the full set of recurrent frames in written Chinese. This study sets out to do so based on an enormous Google database. Common quantitative measures adopted in previous studies are reconsidered. Owing to the considerable quantity of data, some of these measures become less sensitive. High-frequency frames are categorised according to the grammatical category of their components. The results lend cross-linguistic support to previous major findings and show language-specific distributional patterns. Moreover, high-frequency frames are categorised according to their dominant syntactic role in context. Finally, the semantic aspect of Chinese frames is addressed. A semantically hierarchical representational network of frames is established, and significant structural and semantic correlations are identified.