The Referential Function and Semantic Inference of“[ta]”in the“V+O[ta]+OQC”Construction

College of Foreign languages,Minjiang University,Fuzhou,China Email:139201050@qq.com

[Abstract]The“V+O[ta]+OQC”Construction is a very common unconventional expression in modern spoken Chinese,but there are different interpretations on how this kind of structure comes and what’s the inference meaning of it.This paper will study the logic relations among the parts of this construction and the syntactic attribution of this construction based on the corpus,construction grammar and Chomsky Construction Transformation,in order to make a further study of the referential function and semantic of[ta].

[Keywords]“V+O[ta]+OQC”;Referential Function;Semantic Reference;Construction Grammar

Introduction

The unconventional expression“V+O[ta]+OQC”is widely used in modern spoken Chinese,mainly expressing the speaker’s intention meaning,including the speaker’s feeling he or she wants to express.In this construction,“Q”represents the numeral,which can be not only a certain number like one,two,three,but also the uncertain quantifier;“C”in this construction can be a noun,an adjective or even a clause;while the“O[ta]”in this construction specifically refers to the Chinese character“他”.In modern Chinese,“[ta]”is mainly used as the third person pronoun,but in the study of philosophy of language,“[ta]”is usually used as an absent existence.This study will focus on the referential function and the semantic of the word“[ta]”in this construction based on the construction coercion in construction grammar and Chomsky Construction Transformation.All the corpus in this study are abstracted from the Modern Chinese Corpus of the Center for Chinese Language of Beijing University,such as(1)“吃他三個(gè)蘋(píng)果”,(2)“喝他個(gè)痛痛快快”,(3)“鬧他個(gè)天翻地覆”,(4)“打他個(gè)人仰馬翻”,(5)“打他一宿麻將”,etc.In this construction,this study will not translate the“他”into“He”directly.In Chinese language,no matter we use“他”as an object or subject in some sentence,we always use the same Chinese character“他”,that’s because in Chinese,“他”doesn’t have any other variants;but in English language,the word“he”has four different variants in different sentence functions.In order not to make confusion,this study will only use the Chinesepinyin“[ta]”to take the place of the Chinese character“他”.

The Domestic Comparative Study of the“V+O[ta]+OQC”Construction

For this linguistic expression,nine explanations have been worked out by the domestic scholars who have studied primarily concentrated in the following three levels,that is,the level of semantic and sentence structure,the level of phonetics and aesthetics,as well as the level of construction.

At the level of semantic and sentence structure,Liu Naizhong(Liu,2001)identified this structure as a verb-object structure,and he regarded“[ta]”in the construction as the attributive of the following“three apples”.Xu Jie(Xu,1999&2004)and Lu Jianming(Lu,2002)identified this sentence structure as a double-object structure,thinking that“[ta]”is the object of the preceding“V”.Ma Qingzhu(Ma,1983)proposed the concept of“quasi-doubleobject structure”,that’s because he thought that the reference of“[ta]”in this kind of structure is not clear or uncertain,therefore Ma Qingzhu suggested that“[ta]”in this structure can be regarded as the object of a virtual sign.According to the relationship between“[ta]”and the following“C”,Zhu Dexi(Zhu,1982)regarded this structure as the single-object structure when“[ta]”is the attributive of the following“C”,while he regarded this structure as the double-object structure when“[ta]”and the following“C”are used as the two objects of the proceeding“V”.Xiong Xueliang(Xiong,2008)explained this structure as“verb-object complement”structure,thinking that the“QC”is used as a supplement of the degree of the proceeding“V”.

At the level of phonetics and aesthetics,Yuan Yulin(Yuan,2002)believes that“[ta]”in this structure is nonreferential.The existence of“[ta]”is to help to form a double-syllable structure for the needs of the rhythms when expressing.

At the level of construction,Wang Yin(Wang,2009)proposed the concept of inheritance and integration approach by means of construction grammar and Construction Procedural Analysis Frame,to analyze the very elements of the“V+O[ta]+OQC”construction from the perspectives of grammar,semantics and pragmatics.Lei Dongping(Lei,2012,p.147)agrees with the concept of ditransitive construction,and he further proposed that this ditransitive construction“could only be grammaticalized to form a hardly divided constructive integrity when the meaning of‘[ta]’is abstract under the semantic circumstances that the construction has the meaning‘a(chǎn)ttainment’”.Then,this construction means attaining subjective large volume easily,and the whole construction means trying for attaining subjective in future.By this moment,“[ta]”in this structure is considered as its non-referential usage,which makes the whole construction grammaticalize.Zhang Long(Zhang,2012)believes that the numeral“Q”is an object marker,besides he proposed that the“V+O[ta]+OQC”construction is produced by analogy and blending from the other two constructions of“V+ge VP”and“V+ta2+NP”.while Zhang Ailing(Zhang,2008)mainly discusses the construction from the perspectives of its construction form and the semantic characteristics as well as the lexical feature,thinking that the form of this construction experiences a process of ordinal modular combinations.

Based on the analysis of the above domestic comparative studies,the writer finds that most of the current domestic researches on this special construction focus on discussing the attribution of this expression.If we want to make it clear about this construction structure,we should first determine whether“[ta]”has a referential function.If“[ta]”has the reference function in the construction,then it can have two syntactical functions in the construction.First,it can be an indirect object of the proceeding“V”,then this construction can be used as a ditransitive construction;second,the“[ta]”here can also be an attributive of the following“C”,then this construction can be used as a transitive construction.If“[ta]”doesn’t have any reference in the construction,then some scholars think“[ta]”can only be used as an auxiliary,thus this construction will be transformed into a transitive structure.This paper will try to work out the preconditions to determine the reference function of“[ta]”and explore the connection of semantic and form of this construction.

The Conditions of Estimating the Reference Function of“[ta]”

In order to study the referential function of“[ta]”,we first need to work out the sentence meaning.Structural linguists perceive that the meaning of the whole sentence comes from the simple combination of every elements’meaning in the sentence.However,“as one of the leading hot spots of cognitive linguistics research,the construction is regarded as the possible framework to give a unified interpretation of language phenomena”.(Liu,2012)Different from structuralism,construction theories consider that the meaning of a sentence should be produced by the mutual coercion of each element in the construction.“The coercion mainly means that a potential syntactic environment will produce a coercion operator which has a coercive influence on lexical meaning when a kind of semantic conflict happens to the lexical meaning and construction meaning,or the lexical meaning and construction meaning are incompatible or mismatched.”(Wang,2011,p.337)

In other words,when a kind of semantic conflict happens to the construction meaning and lexical meaning,language users will have to adjust or reinterpret the lexical meaning according to the construction meaning,in order that they can match with each other or mutually adapt to each other.Under the process of coercion,if the lexical meaning is adjusted or reinterpreted,then it means that the adjusted or reinterpreted lexical meaning is different from its original meaning.And vice versa,if the adjusted or reinterpreted part is the construction meaning,then the whole construction structure might be readjusted or reinterpreted.The writer will take the corpus(1)“吃他三個(gè)蘋(píng)果”(chi ta san ge ping guo)as an example to explore whether the“[ta]”in this sentence gets the coercion by the construction meaning.

The comparison of the previous study shows,if language users consider this special expression“chi ta san ge ping guo”as a transitive structure,then every single lexical item in this construction must meet the structural requirements of the transitive construction,that is,S(subject)+V + O(object).While in this example,there are two seemingly objects“ta”and“ping guo”after the given verbchi(eat).According to the transitivity ofchi(eat),ping guoas a noun undoubtedly can enter into this transitive construction and becomes the object of the proceeding verbchi(eat).Under the coercion of the transitive construction,ta couldn’t be another object of the proceeding verb chi(eat),then from the perspective of syntactic function,ta in this sentence can either be the attribute of the following wordping guo,or be a model particle to help the proceeding verbchi(eat)to express the speaker’s feeling.

Iftais used as an attribute of the following wordping guo,then ta must have the reference function,the referent of ta must be the familiar item by the speaker and listener.It might appear in the proceeding context.At the same time,when ta is used as the attribute of ping guo,then it has the meaning of“his”.The following quantifier“san ge”(three)obviously shows that the action of the verbchi(eat)has happened in the past.“Logically speaking,since we can determine the specific number of ping guo,the describing event should have already occurred,or how can we confirm the specific quantity for the events that haven’t occured yet.”(Wu,2014)

Here is an another possibility,if language users consider this special expression“chi ta san ge ping guo”as a ditransitive construction,the meaning of ditransitive construction will require both direct object and indirect object to enter into this construction.Then ta and ping guo undoubtedly can take the place of the direct and indirect objects individually.At the same time,the verbchi(eat)will receive the coercion given by the ditransitive construction meaning and make itself be a causative which has the ditransitive meaning of“(the subject)causes him to eat three apples”.Thus,ta as an indirect object must have referential function obviously to help the proceeding verbchi(eat)have the cause-meaning,then the referent of ta might either be the one both the speaker and listener know or be the one mentioned in the proceeding context.Since the verb entering into this construction gets the coercion and gain its own causative attribute by the ditransitive construction’s meaning,then the tense of this kind of causative structure is usually not affected by the quantifier of the direct object,it can indicate both what has happened and what will happen in future.

Besides,we couldn’t neglect a third possibility,that is we couldn’t find out the referent of ta from the proceeding context,that’s to say,tain this moment doesn’t have the reference function,then the non-referential ta will produce a reverse coercion to the whole construction and make the construction lose its attribute of ditransitive.Thus,taoriginally as a pronoun loses his reference function and can only be used as a modal particle to help to emphasize the speaker’s emotion which shows the pragmatic function ofta.But what kind of syntactic function we may work out here forta?we need to work out the syntactic function ofta.According to its special syntactic position,the writer propose a concept of a pseudo-object which takes place the position of real object with pragmatic function but doesn’t have any real referent.

The Semantic Inference of“[ta]”through Construction Transformation

In this construction,if we want to work out the logical semantic ofta,then we should first clearly know how to estimate whethertahas its referential function as a pronoun or not.The writer estimates the referential function oftathrough the hypothesis method in the above section,while in the study of syntactic function,Chomsky mainly emphasized that“the basis of a sentence is mapped into the sentence by the transformation rules,which furthermore,automatically assign to the sentence a derived Phrase-marker(ultimately,a surface structure)in the process”(Chomsky,1965,p.128).Then in this section,the writer will take the method of deep structure and grammatical transformation by Chomsky to analyze the syntactic funtion of every item in this construction and to further estimate the referential function oftain order to further study the semantic logic oftain this construction.The five given corpus in the beginning of this paper look similar from their surface structure,what about their deep structure?Take“吃他三個(gè)蘋(píng)果”as an example,how many transformations can we work out?

Semantic inference 1 shows that the subject has finished the action given by the predicatechifrom the perspective of tense.Besides,the tree diagram fully shows that the following san geping guo belongstota,that’s to saytais defined as an attributive to modify ping guo.Sotahas the referential function and the referent oftamight be mentioned in the proceeding context or be someone known both by the speaker and the listener.Heretacan be understood as his not he,so we can translate this sentence like“having eaten his three apples”.

Transformation 2 endowschiwith an attributive of causative and makechihave the meaning of“causing somebody to eat something”.Originally,chidoesn’t have this causing-meaning,but the surface structure of the transformation 2 looks like a ditransitive construction,then this ditransitive construction makestaenter into a ditransitive construction and realize its referential function to be a pronoun to occupy the place of the indirect object.By this time,tacan be understood as him not his or he,so we can translate this sentence like“Let him eat three apples”,such a seemingly imperative sentence won’t be influenced by tense.

Totally different from transformation 1 and transformation 2,transformation 3 looks like a transitive sentence from the perspective of syntax.Thoughtais still next to the proceeding verbchi,tadoesn’t have the referential function because it isn’t on the place of indirect object.But the question is whytastill keeps very close to the proceeding verbchiin the transformation 3.The writer proposes the pseudo-object concept structurally,thinking it is used as a modal particle and plays its pragmatic function to help to emphasize the speaker’s emotion.The speaker can stress the pronunciation oftato realize his/her emotion phonetically and The above three transformations show two semantic function.One represents its referential function as a pronoun,its referent should be the one known both by the speaker and the listener; the other is non-referential function but with pragmatic function like a modal particle,the whole construction looks like a ditransitive construction from its surface structure.But the coercion between construction and the item in the construction is mutual,therefore this non-referential ta influences the whole construction contrarily and makes them not become a ditransitive structure.That’s to say,the meaningless ta plays its pragmatic meaning to help the verb to display the s peaker’s kind of emotion.

Conclusion

Through the comparative study in domestic current researches for the special expression,the writer finds out that the current domestic researches on this theme mainly focus on whethertain this construction has its original reference function.Then from the above study,the writer aims to work out the conditions of estimating the referential function oftaand further study the semantic inference oftafrom Chomsky’s construction transformation.Ta in this kind of special expression has two possible syntactic functions and one possible pragmatic function.When it is used as a pronoun to reveal its syntactic function,it is meaningful and it can be an attribute or indirect object; when it is used as non-referential pronoun,it is meaningless but it has its pragmatic function.

Acknowledgements

This article is the research achievement of the Pseudo-Ditransitive Research Based on the“V+O[Ta]+OQC”Construction of Modern Chinese supported by Social Science Fund Youth Program of Fujian Provincial Education Department(JAS160409).