Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Motivation of the Study
Construction grammar is a frontier subject of linguistics home and abroad, and it is also an emerging discipline researched under the framework of Cognitive Linguistics theory. But in terms of the development of Construction Grammar itself, it has experienced a long historical process. First, Lakoff questioned Chomsky's generative grammar and put forward “we cannot research the syntax without semantics”, pointing out that the overall meaning is not the simple combination of the significance of its parts; Then, Fillmore, Langacker, Goldberg, Croft and Kay proposed that construction was the pair of form and meaning, pointing out that the construction was conventionalized pairings of form and function. Gradually, construction theory becomes mature. However, the theory is persuasive only when it is integrated with practice. The language used in life is the most vivid material, which has provided us a large number of lively corpora for our study. It can’t be better if we could deal with our daily linguistic problems by applying the linguistic theories we have learned. “恋爱虽易，婚姻不易，且行且珍惜” was released in Ma Yili’s micro-blog in April 2014 (“Being in love is easy, being married is not. It is to be cherished.” was translated and reported by BBC at the same time). Soon, the construction style was imitated by numerous netizens. 11.74 million items of sina micro-blogs stick to discuss it. Apparently, “qie x qie y” has become a new construction. “qie... qie...(且...且...)” is also referred to as the “Yili style”(伊琍体 Yili is the name of its promulgator), and obviously it is more popular than the “Zhen Huan style”(甄嬛体), which appeared the year before.
............
1.2 Objective of the Study
In the book of Goldberg’s (1995) Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure: Construction is a conventionalized pairing of form and meaning. C presents Construction, if and only if C is a form and meaning pair <Fi, Si>, whose meaning can be predicted from its early existed constructions, but cannot be predicted from its components. (Goldberg, 1995:4) When we analyze the components of “qie x qie y”, we know the construction concludes three parts: qie…qie (且...且, and qie is a conjunction); x (it could be a noun, a verb or an adjective); y (it could be a noun, a verb or an adjective). In the following analysis, all the parts of speech are looked up in Modern Chinese Dictionary 6th edition (《现代汉语词典》第六版). On the basis of statistical analysis and discussion with BC model, we find out that, in order to understand the construction “qie x qie y”, there are two cognitive processes, which are Construction Coercion and Blending. The construction prototypically conveys one should do two things at the same time, and some implications emerge in the blend space. This thesis has also attempted to amend the Construction Coercion proposed by Goldberg(1995, 2006), Michaelis (2004) and Langacker(1987) and to further extend the Blending Theory put forward by G.Fauconnier & M.Turner (2002:40, 102) by building the BC Model for the first time.
...........
Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Introduction
The literature review of this thesis consists of two parts. The first part is about previous studies on buzzwords, taking the lexicological approach, the pragmatical approach and the cognitive approach. The second part is about previous studies on qie and qie x qie y. Finally, the gap in the previous study will be pointed out, which inspires the thesis to try to make up for the deficiency.
........
2.2 Previous Studies on Buzzword
Buzzword contains three basic elements including network, fashion and language. In the Modern Chinese Dictionary (6th edition), buzzword is the vocabulary which is widely popular during certain period of the society. Yang ping (2010) pided the buzzword into three types: the first type is the general network language, which is mainly pictographic, homophonic, metaphorical, abbreviated words to express a certain meaning, and which also includes the simplified expressions used by netizens in the network communication, such as letters, numbers and symbols; the second type is the widespread network witticisms created by netizens, such as what the elder brother eats is not noodles, but loneliness(哥吃的不是面，是寂寞), the big brother is only a legend(哥只是个传说), it’s not you feel cold, but your mother feel that you are cold(有一种冷叫你妈妈觉得你冷), etc; the last type is the network buzzword which is related to the social and public events, such as hide-and-seek(躲猫猫), I don’t care and won’t make any comments(俯卧撑), I am just a passer-by(打酱油) ect. The third kind of network buzzword is to solve the public events, and obviously, which is under the supervision of the public.
.........
Chapter Three Theoretical Framework: BC Model ...... 15
3.1 Introduction ........... 15
3.2 Theoretical Basis ............. 15
3.3 Theoretical Integration: BC Model ............ 34
3.4 A Case Study .......... 38
3.4 Summary ...... 39
Chapter Four Data Statistics, Analysis and Discussion ......... 40
4.1 Introduction ............ 40
4.2 Data Description and Distribution ............. 40
4.3 Data Analysis ......... 42
4.4 Discussion with BC Model ...... 59
4.5 Summary ...... 63
Chapter Five Conclusion .......... 65
5.1 Main Findings and Implications ....... 65
5.2 Limitations and Suggestions ............. 66
Chapter Four Data Statistics, Analysis and Discussion
4.1 Introduction
This chapter makes the data description, data analysis and result discussion in detail by applying the theoretical framework BC model (Blending Coercion Model), which is built in chapter three, section 3.3.3. The research is qualitative and quantitative. All the 290 items of qie x qie y construction variants have been collected from the Internet. What’s more, both the cognitive and constructional theories will be applied to analyze the syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and rhythmical features of the new construction qie x qie y.This is a data-driven research. The data results from the different classifications of the 290 items of qie x qie y exhaustively collected from the Internet. First, we input the key words qie x qie y(且?且?) into the Baidu advanced search engine and micro-blog(both sina and tencent) and choose all the qualified variants. Second, write down the useful variant while reading, watching TV and traveling out. Finally, we have collected 290 items, which are type frequency, for being short of time to consider the token frequency, such as there are endless qie xing qie zhen xi items, but we only study it as a type. In Modern Chinese Dictionary (6th edition), qie(且) is a conjunction, with an usage qie...qie...(且?且?), and it is interpreted as: respectively placed in front of two verbs meaning that two actions happen simultaneously. For example: talk and walk(且谈且走 qie tan qie zou); fight and retreat(且战且退 qie zhan qie tui). qie... qie... means sb do two different things at the same time. That’s to say, the literal meaning of qie xing qie zhen xi is we should learn to cherish what we meet with in our life journey.
..........
Conclusion
In order to fill the gap of previous studies, this thesis regards qie x qie y as a construction and first puts forward BC Model from the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics, which is an integration of Construction Coercion and Blending Theory by which qie x qie y construction is analyzed in detail. Firstly, we have collected 290 items from Baidu advanced search engine and Micro-Blog (sina & tencent) for our research, and then classify them into 8 types from the perspective of the part of speech. The item numbers of the verb-verb, verb-adjective, verb-noun, noun-verb, adjective-verb, noun-noun, noun-adjective and adjective-adjective are 233, 5, 23, 6, 16, 1, 1,and 5 respectively, and their percentages are 80.35%, 1.72%, 7.93%, 2.07%, 5.52%, 0.35%, 0.35% and 1.72%, among which, the number of “v-v” is nearly 233, counting for 80.345%. In the original construction qie xing qie zhenxi, xing and zhen xi are two verbs, obviously, besides the verb, an adjective or a noun also can be act as an x or y, which can be explained by the Coercion Theory. To understand the meaning the qie x qie y, we also should apply the Blending Theory. Secondly, the semantic of qie x qie y is that doing x while doing y. So qie x qie y is while doing x and do not forget to do y. x and y are not contradictory, and they appear at the same time, y is cling to the x. x appears before y, and the duration of x is longer than that of y. qie x qie y is commonly used to describe a thing, or speaker’s self-mockery, feeling helpless, exhortation, warning others or used to express the philosophy of life and the life principle. Obviously, the same as the original construction qie xing qie zhen xi, its variants are used to express the speakers emotion and are mainly used as the exhortation and warming to cherish.
.........
The reference (omitted)