Pei-yu Liao
4. A Frame-based Analysis
One of the central principles of Frame Semantics is ‘one frame, one meaning.’ Analyzing the Internal Judgment Frame, we find that its frame elements can be classified according to the evaluated target. i.e. depending on an event or an entity. With different evaluated target, the internal judgment verb 同意 may sway to different side, exhibiting different degree on expressing epistemic certainty and the force of manipulation. The following examples (8)-(11) are the repetition of examples (4)-(7) with the tagged frame elements.
(9) [我/Evaluator]同意[這次開會很有意義/Content]
(10) [我/Evaluator]同意[你/Content_Description]
(11) [我/Evaluator]同意[離開/Evaluated_Act]
(12) [我/Evaluator]同意[你/Evaluated_Actor][離開Evaluated_Act]
13 In ancient Mandarin, 同意 is an intransitive verb, originally expressing “the subjects are with one heart” showed in the example “道者，令民與上同意”(孫子‧始計篇). In modern Mandarin, the transitivity becomes significant to 同意, now only used as transitive verb.
14 Based on Hu (2008), the cognition verb 認為 denotes the cognizer’s opinion toward the proposition.
From Figure 1, the Evaluated Target of Internal Judgment verbs can be either an entity15 or an event. In this paper, we only take an event, either epistemic or deontic one, into account. According to Givón (1993), epistemic judgment codes one’s certainty, belief, or probability toward the proposition;
deontic judgment denotes the desire, preference, obligation, or manipulation. For Mandarin Internal Judgment Verbs, the type of deontic judgment can be further divided into ‘preference’ and ‘permission’, i.e. ‘preference’ means that the evaluator can manipulate himself; ‘permission’ means that the evaluator can manipulate others. Reanalyzing Chang’s study, we find that the three verbs, 答應‘promise’, 同意
‘agree,’ 允許‘allow,’ have different frame elements that inherited from different frames. The following examples are adopted from Chang’s paper sharing the same syntactic patterns but differing from semantic meaning with each other.
(13) 他答應另寫一篇。
(14) 他同意另寫一篇。
(15) 他允許另寫一篇。
Obviously, subjects in each example have different manipulative ability to the proposition. The verb 答應 inherited from Response Frame16 shows subject’s preference response to a proposition which has weak manipulation to the subject himself. The verb 允許 inherited from Permit Frame17 shows subject’s permission to a proposition which has strong manipulation to the subject’s position in the proposition.
(16) 他答應我另寫一篇。 Æ*我另寫一篇，他答應了。
(17) 他同意我另寫一篇。 Æ我另寫一篇，他同意了。
(18) 他允許我另寫一篇。 Æ我另寫一篇，他允許了。
Adopting Givón’s semantic scale, we find that each Mandarin Internal Judgment Verb behaves differently depending on their frame elements. Though the starting point may not be identical, the general tendency of semantic extension is unidirectional, and the semantic extension range is based on the polysemy of a verb. The following figure displays the semantic scale of five representative Mandarin Internal Judgment Verbs: 同意、贊成、答應、允許、認同.
15 The entity is the person or thing about whom/ which an evaluator’s judgment is based on or directly toward. In the example 我信任你 ‘I trust you’, the Evaluated_Target is the Entity 你.
16 In Response Frame, an Agent performs a Response action in consequence of a Trigger event. In many cases, a non-agentive Responding_entity causes the Response after the Trigger occurs.
17 In Permit Frame, a Grantor (either a person or an institution) grants permission for a Grantee to perform an Action or for an Action to occur.
Internal Judgment
Entity
Event
epistemic (state) deontic (action)
weak manipulation (preference) strong manipulation
(permission)
Figure 1. The Evaluated Target of Internal Judgment verbs
Form Figure 2, it can be observed that 同意 possesses the widest semantic range. The lexical meaning of 同意 is extended from preference to epistemic certainty and strong manipulation. The semantic range of 贊成 is slightly narrower than 同意 since the subject of 贊成 cannot force the actor to achieve the action. As for 認同、允許、答應, the semantic extension of those verbs is relatively more fixed.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, the semantic of Internal Judgment Verbs can be extended from deontic to both epistemic and manipulation. Conceptual transfer is reflected in semantic transfer and frequency in use may also play a role. The more frequently used one word is, the more meanings it may have (Bybee 2001, 2003). Pragmatic inference is significant to the semantic extension form preference to manipulation. Independent from the context, the literal meaning of 同意 signals one’s preference to an event or some kinds of opinion and behavior. In the utterance, 同意 can be manipulative due to the frequent usage of more authoritative Evaluator. The semantic extension of Mandarin Judgment Verbs involves not only subjectivity but pragmatic inference. The five verbs 同意、贊成、答應、允許、認同 mentioned in this paper represent five subclasses that are distinct in semantic range and pragmatic inferences.
Reference
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Figure 2. Semantic Scale of Four Representative Mandarin Internal Judgment Strong---Weak---Preference---Epis temic
同意 贊成/反對 答應 允許 認同
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[13] Academa Sinica Balanced Corpus of Modern Chinese (Sinica Corpus) [14] http://www.sinica.edu.tw/SinicaCorpus