Metaphor, Inference, and Conceptualisation: On the Development of V-diao Construction in Mandarin

V-diao constructions, according to their semantics, fall into three categories: A) Physical disappearance from its original position, with the V slot filled by physical verbs, such as tao-diao “escape”, diu-diao “throw away”, and so on. B) Disappearance from a certain conceptual domain, rather than from the physical space, with the V slot filled by less physically perceivable verbs, such as jie-diao “quit”, wang-diao “forget” and the like. C) The third category of V-diao involves speaker’s subjective, always negative, attitude to the result. Examples include: lan-diao “rot”, ruan-diao “soften”, huang-diao “turn yellow”, and so forth. The meaning in Type C constructions cannot be gained by simply putting their component parts together, so in this study, I shall term V-diao as a construction (Goldberg 1995) rather than merely a resultative compound (Li and Thompson 1981). Metaphor, as a mechanism of semantic change (Sweetser 1990, Bybee, Perkins and Pagliuca 1994, Heine, Claudi and Hunnemeyer 1991), is a plausible account of the polysemy between Type A and B. Type A denotes disappearance from physical space, while Type B disappearance from the conceptual space. I thus speculate on the mapping relation between the physical and the abstract, conceptual domain. Other than metaphor, pragmatic inference is claimed to be a major mechanism of semantic change (Hopper and Traugott 1993, Bybee, Perkins and Pagliuca 1994). In such changes, context plays a crucial role. Frequent use of a grammatical or lexical unit in a particular context may lead to the inference that the context is an integral part of its meaning. The development of Type C V-diao may relate to frequent co-occurrence of negative verbs and -diao. (The reason why only negative verbs are allowed in the construction will be further addressed in the next section.) Consequently, negative connotation may spread to the entire construction and give rise to the constructional meaning. There also exists a cognitive constraint on its applicability. The construction does not allow verbs with positive connotation in the V slot. This is because, the semantics of the construction cannot contradict the metaphor it is based on (Huang and Chang 1996). Also, it cannot override, either, the orientational metaphor based on human experiential basis (Lakoff and Johnson 1980): GOOD IS UP; DOWN IS BAD. Hopefully, this study can serve as a valid argument for the interaction of our language use and grammar, and the conceptual basis of human language.