Base-generated “ellipsis” constructions in Chinese

Caused-Motion Constructions in Chinese: A constructional-cognitive analysis

In this paper, we examine the characteristics of unaccusative ‘give’ constructions in Chinese, and additionally identify the pathways for their emergence in some Chinese dialects, in particular Southern Min and Mandarin varieties.In this paper, the termsdialectandvarietyare sometimes used interchangeably, with the termvarietybeing the more general term that can also include variations within dialects.We distinguish between Type 1 and Type 2 unaccusative ‘give’ constructions, the former involving reversible ‘escape’-type intransitive predicates, and the latter irreversible ‘die’-type intransitive predicates. Type 1 constructions are attested in many Chinese varieties, such as Mandarin, Min, Wu, Hui, Hakka and Cantonese, whereas Type 2 constructions are more rare and thus far are mainly attested in Southern Min and some Mandarin varieties. Two major pathways in the development of unaccusative ‘give’ constructions are identified in this paper, namely, the causative pathway and the passive-mediated pathway. Our analysis also traces how the unaccusative ‘give’ construction develops into a marker of adversity and speaker affectedness. The findings of this study have implications for understanding the relationship between changes in valence (i.e., the number of core arguments that are profiled in a given construction) and speaker’s subjective stance.

Now, In China, economic systems are changing from planned economy to market economy. Just then, China happened to join WTO. These economical circumstances are obliged Chinese construction industry to break away from a their traditional policy of managing. Chinese economy has a high growth under the stimulus of those changing. Investment in facility and infrastructure is brisk. In this current situation, Chinese construction management system is looking forward to international system. The bid system became one important part of new system. But, various problems are happened in transition.This paper is made through the introduction of Chinese bid system that include content, process, management, etc, investigation and analyzing of the present of the Chinese construction surrounding, discussion on the problems of bid system, suggestion compare with Japanese bid system.

Double-object construction is a common cross-linguistic phenomenon, and there exists a special double-object construction which differs from the normal one both syntactically and semantically. This article aims to explore the syntactic and semantic similarities and discrepancies of two types of construction in Chinese and Japanese. Specifically, this article first generalizes the similar and divergent syntactic and semantic features of the two patterns in Chinese and Japanese (also involving other languages, such as Korean). Further, based on the comparison, this article reveals that the formation of the special construction depends on whether its possessor can receive appropriate case.

The Chinese ditransitive construction expresses the ‘bidirectional’ transfers: the movement of the patient either (a) from the subject to indirect object or (b) from the indirect object to subject, a feature that has not been identified in other languages. This construction is thus different from the ditransitive construction in English and other languages whose ditransitive constructions can express only a ‘single-direction’ transfer: the movement of the patient from the subject to indirect object only. This article addresses the reason for the unusual functions of the ditransitive construction in Chinese. A parallel difference between these two languages is found in the semantic structures of those ditransitive verbs: Chinese coins a single verb to express the same type of ‘transfer’ action with opposite directions, but English usually invents two distinct verbs to denote the two antonymous meanings whose directions are opposite; e.g., the Chinese verbjièsubsumes the meanings of bothborrowandlendin English. This article argues that the different meanings of the ditransitive constructions of Chinese and English result from the different conceptualizations of their ditransitive verbs. In construction grammar, the following question remains unanswered: where does the meaning of the construction come from? The present analysis provides evidence that the meanings of the verbs within the construction are capable of determining the meaning/function of the whole construction.

Over the past decade, Chinese construction activity in Africa has been dramatically enhanced with the launch of China’s ‘going out’ national strategy and the support and coordination of the Chinese government, business associations, and banks, and with innovative financing approaches such as Angola Mode. Based on original empirical data collected through interviews and questionnaire surveys, this paper analyzes the local operations of Chinese construction firms (CCFs) in the African construction market. It provides a descriptive profile of CCFs in terms of project pursuit, procurement of materials and equipment, workforce composition, financing sources, technology practices, environmental and social safeguards, and language barriers. The study offers a unique look into the behaviour of a crosssection of the largest players from the Chinese construction industry at a time when they are expanding aggressively beyond their traditional home market. The article also characterizes indirectly the expanding but complex African construction market.

In recent years, the improvement of risk management and the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) training process has become a hot topic. Virtual Reality (VR) technology is an efficient method to improve training efficiency and reduce accidents. Previous studies have validated its feasibility and usefulness in the construction industry. However, there is currently a lack of research on the adoption of VR technology in the Chinese construction industry. The present work explores the current applications of VR and the model for possible adoption by the Chinese construction companies using a mixed research methodology. Furthermore, this research has quantified the relationships between each adoption variable in China.

Chinese construction companies have experienced dramatic rises in labour wages in recent years. The control and management of construction labour costs are becoming increasingly significant, but the concerns remain secondary in the country. An integrated evaluation index system was established for the labour costs in this paper. Principle component analysis was adopted to study the Chinese construction labour costs between the period 1996 and 2010. The results indicated that labour prices continued to increase from 1996 in China; in 2004 especially, the growth rate accelerated. Meanwhile, the input–output efficiency of the Chinese labour costs increased significantly, and the relative labour costs dropped. The labour costs of the Chinese construction industry presented a beneficial development trend. In an effort to further upgrade the comprehensive level of labour costs in the country, the structure should be further optimised and production mode of construction industry changed.

Chinese expatriate workers in Africa remain an under-researched and poorly understood group despite their large numbers. Based on data collected through interviews and participant observations during 2013 and 2014 among Chinese expatriate construction workers employed by a large-scale Chinese state-owned construction enterprise in Zambia, this article offers an analysis of their migration experience as it relates to the context of China’s growing economic involvement with Africa. This paper further argues that Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Africa function as transnational social organizations to promote Chinese expatriate workers’ migration to Africa and provide them social support and care when they experience difficulties during their sojourn. In this way, the patron–client relationship was formed between Chinese SOEs and Chinese expatriate workers, paralleling the existing employment relationship.

The NP de VP construction in modern Chinese has been of constant interest to theoretical linguists. Previous studies foregrounded word classes of lexical items in the VP slot, semantic relationships between the VP and the NP, and lexical items that could fill both the VP and the NP slots of the construction. However, in this research, we highlighted typical meanings of this construction and the denoted meaning patterns of lexical items in both the VP and the NP slots by drawing on the covarying collexeme analysis and the hierarchical cluster analysis, respectively. The findings demonstrate that typical meanings of this construction generally include the pairing of “regulations” in the NP slot and “implementation” in the VP slot, the pairing of “systems” in the NP slot and “establishment” in the VP slot, and the pairing of “results” in the NP slot and “achievement” in VP slot. Meaning patterns of the lexical items with significant attraction in the VP slot briefly incorporate such clusters as “cognition”, “augmentation”, “implementation”, “achievement”, “establishment”, and “report”; and those in the NP slot generally include such patterns as “internal traits”, “medical names”, “regulations”, “results”, “systems”, and “business”. The significance of this study lies in that it scientifically identified instances that are capable of expressing the typical meaning of the NP de VP construction and uncovered objectively and precisely the denoted meaning patterns of lexical items in the VP slot and the NP slot of the construction.

This paper aims to explain the formation of the kě and kě yǐ constructions in archaic Chinese. We analyze a number of examples from the pre-Qin era to refute previous hypotheses that the kě construction is formed by adding kě to a notional passive, fronting the object in an active sentence including kě, or solely by reanalysis. Subsequently, a verb-moving-backward hypothesis is proposed: kě is used in the underlying structure ‘V-O’ + kě to comment on an already known proposition ‘V-O’, then V is moved to the end to avoid the top-heavy problem. Similarly, this hypothesis also accounts for the kě yǐ construction: kě in the underlying structure ‘yǐ-X-V-Y’ + kě is to comment on the serial verb structure ‘yǐ-X-V-Y’, which is interchangeable with ‘X-yǐ-V-Y’ forming ‘X-yǐ-V-Y’ + kě where ‘yǐ-V-Y’ is moved after kě to avoid the top-heavy problem. Moreover, the “verb moving backward” hypothesis provides new insights into the formation process of similar constructions (e.g., nán 难 ‘be difficult to V,’ yì 易 ‘be easy to V,’ zú 足 ‘be sufficient to V’ constructions) in ancient Chinese, as well as the study of tough constructions.

Abstract: Problem statement: It is well-known that modern Chinese imposes such a requirement on the subject in the BEI passive, but in fact it does not hold tightly in Modern Chinese. Only 50-75% of passives have the adversity reading on the subject. Approach: One approach to explain this phenomenon is to adopt the view of grammaticalization and trace the semantic change of the morpheme BEI. However, the majority of the passive construction in archaic Chinese is not the BEI passive, but the WEI construction. The Adversity reading in the WEI construction in archaic Chinese is examined as a pilot study in this study. Results: Our research result shows that in the book of Shi Ji, among 50 tokens, 78% of the WEI passive has the adversity reading. Conclusion: This thus indicates that our impression about the adversity reading imposed on passives is not an absolute requirement, no matter in modern or archaic Chinese. On the other hand, the investigation of the WEI...SUO construction indicates that there is a decline of the adversity reading. We therefore conclude that a follow-up study should be carried out to complete the whole picture of the investigation of the adversity reading in Chinese passives.Key words: The BEI passive, the WEI (...SUO) passive, grammaticalization and language change(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)INTRODUCTIONUnlike passives in English, it is widely assumed that most passives in Chinese impose an adversity reading on the grammatical subject (Hsin, 1990; Liu et al., 2001; Tseng, 2004), as articulated by the authors of a recent textbook for teachers of Chinese as a Second Language, modern Mandarin Chinese, BEI constructions are employed mostly when the subject suffers from some damage or feels unhappy. Therefore its usage is very limited (Liu et al., 2001, p.423) (the original excerpt from Liu et al. (2001) is as follows: Zai xiandai hanyu Putonghua li,'bei ziju muqian duo yongyu dui zhuyu laishuo shi shousun-de huo bu yukuai-de qingxing, suoyi ta-de shiyong shi bijiao youxian-de (p. 423)). Hence, examples like (1a) and (1b), with a beneficiary reading on the subject, are considered ungrammatical. In contrast, the example in (2), which has an adversity/malificiary reading, is allowed (However, as pointed out by Liu et al. (2001), if a verbal complement is added after the verb ai ('love') in (3b), this sentence becomes acceptable in Chinese).(i) Zhangsan bei ta-de xuesheng ai de yao-si. Zhangsan BEI his student love DE want-die 'Zhangsan was loved by his students.'Hence, it seems that the adding of the complement in BEI constructions may somehow cancel the requirement of the adversity reading on the subject. In the following discussion, the reader will see when examining BEI constructions, we consider both situations with and without the complement to avoid the controversy over this issue.... (1)b. *Zhangsan bei ta-de xuesheng ai. Zhangsan BEI his student love 'Zhangsan was loved by his students.'... (2)However, this requirement in fact is not fully carried out if one examines the modern Chinese passives in the corpus. For example, according to some recent corpus studies by McEnery et al. (2003); McEnery and Xiao (2005); Xiao et al. (2006); Yang (2006) and Kuo (2010), it has been noticed that the adversity requirement does not hold tightly in Modern Chinese. These studies show that only 50-75% of the BEI passive has the adversity reading on the subject.In the following discussion, we will first introduce the corpus works of Kuo (2010) and Peyraube (1989) which both address the issue of the adversity reading of the BEI passives. After that, we will point out that we may need to consider another historical factor when we examine the adversity reading change of the BEI passive. That is, in archaic Chinese, the BEI passive is not the only and major passive construction. We then investigate the WEI construction and conclude that in archaic Chinese, the WEI construction, as a major passive representative, also do not have a high percentage of adversity reading imposed on its subject. …

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Whether degrees should be modeled as simple semantic primitives or ontologicallycomplex entities has been an issue in recent formal semantic research. This article aims tomake a contribution to this scholarly enterprise by investigating the Differential VerbalComparative (DVC) construction in Chinese. DVCs exhibit peculiar properties : (i)obligatory differentials, and (ii) DPs as differentials(e.g., liang ben xiaoshuo ‘two CL novel’).We propose that a degree is the entity correlate of a property that is formed on the basis of ameasure, akin to Chierchia-style kind. This new kind of degree, coupled with a differencefunction-based semantics for comparatives, correctly predicts the behaviors of DVCs whichwould otherwise remain formally inscrutable. This article’s contributions are twofold: (i) itprovides direct support for the degree-as-kind analysis by extending its empirical scope; and(ii) by combining degrees as kinds with a difference function-based semantics, it representsan improvement over the previous degree-as-kind analysis based on linear ordering.Keywords: comparatives, degrees, kinds, Mandarin Chinese, differential verbalcomparatives.

This chapter explores the lexical hybridity features in translated Chinese, including morphological constructions, functional words and ‘DV constructions’. It discusses the features of suffixes, variations of DV constructions in translated Chinese with examples. The reasons for the prevalence of DV constructions in Chinese are also discussed in the chapter.