A Corpus-based Approach to Antonym Co-occurrences in Mandarin Chinese

• Main Authors: Chan-Chia Hsu, 許展嘉
• Other Authors: Yung-O Biq
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/wzj945

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語學系 === 96 === The thesis adopts a corpus-based approach to investigating how antonym co-occurrences in Mandarin Chinese function in text. In total, 25 antonymous pairs are selected for analysis, and 3,605 sentences are sampled from the Chinese Word Sketch Engine. The analysis is mainly based on Jones' (2002) functional framework. In Mandarin Chinese, thirteen textual functions of antonym co-occurrences are identified. Coordinated Antonymy and Ancillary Antonymy are the most dominant functions. In addition, it is found that the functional distribution of antonyms in Mandarin Chinese may be influenced by their traditional category of semantic oppositeness, grammatical category, extent of modernization, and morpho-syllabic structure. Moreover, cross-linguistic discrepancies in how antonyms function in text are attributed to language-specific structural properties. Furthermore, the thesis identifies the typical lexico-syntactic frames that are associated with the textual functions of antonymy in Mandarin Chinese. The recurrent linguistic formulas may enhance the pairing between antonyms. In addition, antonyms in Mandarin Chinese are also found to prefer a particular sequencing in text. In Mandarin Chinese, factors that affect antonym sequencing include positivity and frequency. However, the reverse sequencing order shows up when perspective shifts take place in text. The thesis on antonym co-occurrences in Mandarin Chinese lends cross-linguistic support to Jones' (2002) functional framework and touches on the cognitive facet of antonymy in Mandarin Chinese. The thesis illustrates an attempt to treat antonymy, a traditionally semantic issue, from the corpus and discourse analysis perspective, focusing on the syntagmatic aspect of antonymy. It is suggested that further research on antonymy should take a multi-corpus, cross-linguistic approach to examine how such a language-internal phenomenon interacts with language-specific structural properties and language-external factors.