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A Study on Conceptualisation and Verbalisation of Actions in Chinese and Slovene
Abstract
The paper attempts to analyse the semantic and syntactic idiosyncrasy of Chinese, compared to Slovenian, in order to assess the degree of languagespecifi city with regards to actions. Based on data obtained from an empirical study performed on Chinese native speakers at the Capital Normal University in Beijing, we try to show how language-specific syntactic features may affect semantic understanding of the uttered message. The main goal of the study is to draw attention to the need of a more conprehensive didactic approach
in the fi eld of teaching Chinese as a foreign language (TCFL) that would consider notions like the so-called “rich points” and “languaculture”, and would comply more with experiential approaches in language learning and theories established in intercultural studies.
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3 Previous studies of the lexical aspect of verbs following Vendler (1967) cannot account for verbs of degree achievements (Dowty 1979, Hay et al. 1999, among others). Building on recent studies on " scale structure " (Hay et al. 1999, Rappaport Hovav & Levin 2010, among others). We introduce a new aspectual feature [±scale] into the traditional Vendler system in order to more comprehensively account for a wider range of verbs. By analyzing verbs/verbal compounds from Mandarin Chinese and following the scalar approach, we propose six aspectual classes that are needed not only to adequately accommodate degree achievements, but also to provide a fuller account of all the verbs. This scalar approach can be applied to the aspectual classification of natural languages in general.
This study aims to make a contrastive investigation of the Thai and English transitive-based resultative constructions which consist of a causative predicate indicated by a transitive verb and a resultative predicate linguistically realized as a verb in Thai and an adjective in English. The resultative constructions which are the object of study in this article are those in which the causative predicate is manifested by two kinds of transitive verbs postulated in this article, namely, "implied-result verbs" and "entailed-result verbs". This article examines one of the syntactic-semantic behavioral properties of both types of verb in both languages when they co-occur with resultative predicates. It is found in this article that English implied-result and entailed-result verbs are much more restricted in taking resultative predicates than the Thai counterparts. In other words, Thai resultative constructions are more productive than English ones. The productivity in the case of the former is attributed to the aspectual profile shift operating in serial verb constructions in Thai. Thai resultative constructions are arguably an instantiation of serial verb constructions. Resultative constructions in Thai allow both conventionalized as well as unconventionalized scenes to be expressed. In contrast, only conventionalized scenes can be expressed by resultative constructions in English.
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