CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1 Motivation and Purpose
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Motivation and Purpose
Near-synonymy is a common linguistic phenomenon in our daily life. Lyons says, “[...] near-synonyms: expressions that are more or less similar, but not identical, in meaning” (1981: 50). As a result, for language learners it is always a concerned issue. Partington points out, “ […] there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that vocabulary is often best acquired by analogy, in other words, remembered as being similar in meaning to previously acquired items” (1998: 29). If we look up the dictionary, the meanings of vocabularies are often defined by other similar lexical items. However, these synonymous words are not used in the same way, and this is not accounted for explicitly in dictionaries. In recent years, this phenomenon has received increased attention in fields like linguistics and Teaching Chinese as Second Language (TCSL). Many studies on near-synonymy have been undertaken to
investigate the semantic relations in various languages such as English (Chung 2011) or the contrast between English and Portuguese (Sardinha 2000). With no exception, in Mandarin Chinese some sets of near-synonyms have also been reviewed by
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researchers based on different approaches (Chief et al. 2000, Hsu and Chung 2012, Liu 2002, Liu et al. 2006, Lin 2010, Tsai et al. 1996, Xiao and McEnery 2006).
The transaction words in Mandarin Chinese, maimai (買賣), jiaoyi (交易) and maoyi (貿易), are commonly used in our daily commercial act. When we describe a
transaction event, it is inevitable to mention these three words. If we look up the dictionaries, these three words are interchangeable in the definitions. In the Revised Mandarin Chinese Dictionary (重編國語辭典修訂本) by the Ministry of Education
in Taiwan, the definitions of maimai, jiaoyi and maoyi are given as follows.
買賣
1. 商場上的交易，即做生意。
2. 以非法的途徑奪取財物。
maimai
1. Trading (jiaoyi) in the market place, which is business.
2. Using illegal way to obtain property.
交易
1. 本指交換、互換。後泛指買賣。
2. 往來、交往。
3. 更換、更替。
jiaoyi
1. Originally it meant exchange or switch; now it means commerce (maimai).
2. To be in contact with, or to be in relationship with.
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It is readily perceived that their meanings are defined in a circular manner; maimai is defined by jiaoyi, and both jiaoyi and maoyi are explained as maimai. In addition to the dictionary definition, maimai, jiaoyi and maoyi sometimes are replaceable in sentences. The following examples illustrate.
(1) 但亞洲熊都被列在保育第一類的黑名單上，因此國際上買賣/交易/貿易取自 養殖場的引流膽，仍被視為非法行為。
‘However, Asian black bear is on the first category of species conservation blacklist. Therefore, international trading/commerce/commerce of bear’s bile from the farm is illegal.’
(2) 台視總經理鄭優說：「買賣/*交易/*貿易 片子主要是基於業務考量，若損傷
到台視自身利益，生意當然做不成…
‘The TTV manager, Zheng You, says, “The trading/ *commerce/ *commerce of films is based on business consideration. If it hurts TTV’s business interests, the trading will definitely fail…’
(3) 在很多農民一心就想賣祖產，趕快離農，則開放農地自由買賣/交易/*貿易，
只會加速農業的消失而已。
‘While many farmers have set their minds on selling patrimony and get away from agriculture, it will only accelerate the disappearing of agriculture to legalize the free trading/ commerce/ *commerce of farmlands.’
In sentence (1), maimai, jiaoyi and maoyi are fully interchangeable. However, in the other two sentences (2) and (3), some words will make the sentences ungrammatical.
From the above examples, it appears that maimai is more commonly used. As a result, we might anticipate that the word frequency of maimai will be higher than the other two words. Therefore, we do a simple search on the corpus and online. The following
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table shows the rough result from the Sinica corpus1 and the Google search2. Table 1.1 Word Frequency of maimai, jiaoyi, maoyi
Word Frequency maimai (買賣) jiaoyi (交易) maoyi (貿易)
Sinica Corpus 4.0 280 843 928
Google.tw
(2015/3/28) 27,100,000 214,000,000 38,900,000
From the above data, maimai surprisingly has the lowest word frequency, no matter in the corpus or on the internet. When we describe a commercial event, the prototypical predicates used are mai (買) and mai (賣). However, when these two words combine to be a compound word maimai, the frequency becomes fairly low. The differences of maimai, jiaoyi and maoyi regarding their lexical meanings are quite curious to be
explored. Firth says, “you shall judege a word by the company it keeps” (1957). As a result, this study intends to find out the substantial distinction among maimai, jiaoyi and maoyi based on their collocational behaviors. By examining their collocation, we can continue to discuss the semantic prosodies that arise from the interaction between maimai, jiaoyi or maoyi and their collocates. Finally, we further investigate the frame
elements that appear in the data. Accordingly, the questions to be addressed in this study are as follows.
a. What are the similarities and differences among maimai, jiaoyi and maoyi in terms of their collocational behaviors?
1 an online open corpus (http://asbc.iis.sinica.edu.tw/ )
2 www.goole.com.tw
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b. What semantic prosodies do maimai, jiaoyi or maoyi bring out?
c. What frame elements are evoked by maimai, jiaoyi and maoyi, respectively?