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Abstract

Abstract

Couched within Construction Grammar and through corpus-informed qualitative analysis, this study investigates various types of -constructions and their relations in Contemporary Mandarin Chinese to model a network of them. The results show that the -constructions have developed into a network of heterogeneous structures linked vertically by inheritance relations and horizontally by paradigmatic associations. At the top level, the general schema [S1 O/S2 VP] subsumes three sub-schemas: the broad disposal -construction [S O1 (X) V O2], the narrow disposal -construction [S O [(X1) V X2]/[X V]], and the causative disposal -construction [S1 S2 (X1) V X2], which form paradigmatic sets and are horizontally linked. Each sub-schema further branches into lower-level types of various schematicity, vertically connected within and beyond the -network via instance links and subpart links. Lower-level subschemas at the same level of schematicity constitute paradigmatic relations, and are horizontally connected. This study showcases the value of the constructional network modelling for representing complex syntactic relations and extends existing typologies of horizontal links by identifying associative relations among the sub-types of a single schema/construction.

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/content/journals/10.1075/rcl.00242.liu
2025-10-31
2025-11-13

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/content/journals/10.1075/rcl.00242.liu
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Modeling a network of the ba-constructions in Contemporary Mandarin
John Benjamins ; https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00242.liu
/content/journals/10.1075/rcl.00242.liu
/content/journals/10.1075/rcl.00242.liu
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keywords: Construction Grammar ; constructional network ; Mandarin Chinese ; horizontal links ; the ba-construction ; vertical links

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