Organization of the Thesis

The thesis is organized as follows: Chapter 1 presents the general introduction of the study along with some background knowledge relevant to the issues. Chapter 2 reviews previous works related to the studies on English and Mandarin motion events, how English Push/Pull verbs relate to those of Mandarin tuī 推 and lā 拉, and previous studies on Mandarin tuī 推 ‘push’ and lā 拉 ‘pull.’ Chapter 3 lists the database, theoretical framework and methodology applied. In Chapter 4, corpus observations on grammatical and distributional patterns will be presented. Chapter 5 proposes a frame-based analysis on Mandarin tuī 推

‘push’ and lā 拉 ‘pull.’ Last but not least, Chapter 6 concludes the thesis with related issues for further research.

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Chapter 2

Literature Review

Tuī 推 ‘push’ and lā 拉 ‘pull,’ as verbs pertaining to caused-motion in Mandarin, correspond to verbs of exerting force: Push/Pull verbs in English (Levin 1993). As indicated by Levin (1993), these verbs have a causal relation of exerting a force onto an entity where push and pull are different in meaning with respect to the direction of force being exerted. As caused-motion verbs, push and pull are also categorized as verbs under the frame of Caused_Motion from the perspective of Frame Semantics (Fillmore 1982). However, contrary to English push/pull, tuī 推 and lā 拉 not only posit properties of a caused-motion verb, but they also demonstrate intimate deictic relations between the Agent and the Moved Entity. In this section, the traditional notions of motion events and the previous studies on the semantic distinctions of English Push/Pull verbs and Chinese tuī 推 and lā 拉 will be briefly reviewed.

2.1 Previous Works on Motion Events

2.1.1 Lexicalization Patterns and Co-event Relations

From the perspective of Cognitive Semantics, Talmy (2000) proposes that a motion event typically involves four internal components: Figure, Move, Path, and Ground which are defined as an object (the Figure), under a motional act (Move), moving or located with respect to a location (the Ground) followed by a path or site (the Path). Besides the above four internal components, a motion event can also be associated with two additional external co-event components: Manner and Cause, as illustrated in (9) below:

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(9) (a) The pencil rolled off the table.

[Move+Manner]

(b) I pushed the keg into the storeroom.

[Move+Cause] (Talmy 2000, vol. II: 26, 4)

The examples in (9) illustrate the typical motion events which are exhibited by the verbs rolled and pushed. In (9a), rolled expresses how the pencil moves and thereby expressing the Manner of motion, while in (9b), pushed exerts an external force that causes the pencil to move and thus describing the Cause of motion. The two external co-event components Manner and Cause thus divide the translational or spatial motion event into two types:

self-initiated motion (9a) and other-initiated motion (9b). In order to define the co-event relations, Talmy proposes the co-event conflation patterns which conflate the main motion event and the subordinate co-event with the forms WITH-THE-MANNER-OF and WITH-THE-CAUSE-OF as the following examples illustrate:

(10) (a) MOVE + Manner

The rock rolled down the hill.

= [The rock MOVED down the hill] WITH-THE-MANNER-OF [the rock rolled].

(b) MOVE + Cause

I kicked the keg into the storeroom.

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= [I AMOVED the keg into the storeroom]

WITH-THE-CAUSE-OF [I kicked the keg]⁵.

(Talmy 2000:30)

Under the lexicalization patterns and the co-event conflations proposed by Talmy (2000), the translational motion events can thus be divided into two groups: self-motion event and caused-motion event which usually involves an external force/cause.

2.1.2 Proto-Caused-Motion Event

Following the framework of Talmy’s motion events, Li (2007) attempts to focus on caused-motion events and classify Mandarin caused-motion verbs into prototypical versus non-prototypical ones. A Caused-motion event, according to Li (2007), involves five internal chain-effected components: Causer, Driving Force, Theme, Motion, and Path which made up the conceptual structure of a typical caused-motion event as illustrated below:

Figure 1

: Typical Caused-motion concept (Li 2007: 24)

Based on Li (2007), a typical caused-motion event consists of a series of subevents: the causing event and the motion event, where the two entities or subevents have a causal relation, with one causing the other to undergo a translocational change, that is, the motion is initiated

5 The subscript “_A” is placed before a verb to indicate that the verb is agentive. (AMOVED= CAUSE to MOVE) (Talmy 2000)

Typical Caused-motion concept

Causer Driving ForceThemeMotionPath

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and controlled by an external causer. This typical caused-motion event is illustrated below⁶:

Figure 2: Typical Caused-motion concept (Li 2007: 23)

With the above five internal components and the association of the two subevents, Li (2007) further proposes that a prototypical caused-motion event consists of ‘a human Causer volitionally exerts physical force and acted directly on a physical Theme and immediately caused the physical theme to move along a physical Path in a physical space.’

2.1.3 Constructional Analysis of Caused-motion

Other from the lexical and cognitive approaches to caused-motion, there are constructional-based approaches to account for both English and Chinese caused-motion verbs regarding the form-to-meaning correspondences. Under the framework of Construction Grammar, Goldberg (1995) defines English caused-motion as structurally following the pattern: [SUB [V OBJ OBL] with the meaning of ‘X CAUSES Y TO MOVE Z’; that is, ‘the causer argument directly causes the theme argument to move along a path designated by the directional phrase.’ The form-meaning correspondence can be represented in figure 3:

6 An example for the involvement of two subevents given by Li (2007) could be: ‘Mary pushed Jim into the room,’ which involves one entity moves from one location to another location under the direct impact of an external causer.

Motion event

Subevent 1

CauserCausing Action

Subevent 2

ThemeMotion

Causing event

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Figure 3: English Caused-Motion Construction (Li 1995, 7: 160)

The above figure illustrates the mapping of the syntactic form and the constructional meaning which postulates that any lexical verb, either encode or not encode the sense of motion will be associated with the sense of caused-motion once situated under such construction. For instance, the verb sneeze as in ‘Frank sneezed the napkin off the table.’

As for the analysis of caused-motion in Chinese, Pan and Chang (2005) did a comparative study on English and Chinese caused-motion construction and pointed out that the crucial distinction between Chinese and English lies in the use of causative markers. In Chinese, causative markers such as bǎ 把, shǐ 使, or rang 讓 are commonly used to express causative motions, whereas in English, the notion of caused-motion can only be expressed by the rigid pattern of (i.e. [NP1 V NP2 PP]).

Moreover, Chinese illustrates vast ways of encoding the path of motion. A caused-motion event in Chinese can usually be expressed by a main verb following a preposition or a non-predicate verb to indicate the direction or path of motion, such as V 在 ‘at,’ V 到 ‘ arrive,’

V 向 ‘face,’ V 往 ‘go toward,’ V 上來 ‘go up,’ V 下來 ‘come down,’ V 進來 ‘come in,’ V 出來 ‘come out,’ V 回來 ‘come back,’ whereas in English, path can only be encoded in a preposition as shown in the following contrastive pairs (11) and (12):

(11) English caused-motion pattern:

(a) He threw the stone into the river.

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(b) Jane sewed a button onto the jacket

(12) Chinese caused-motion pattern:

(a) 他把車開到南京了。

tā bǎ chē kāi dào nánjīng le he BA car drive arrive Nanjing le

‘He drove the car to Nanjing.’

(b) 他把球扔向了我。

tā bǎ qiú rēng xiàng le wǒ he BA ball throw face le me

‘He threw me the ball.’

(c) 我們把羊群放出去了。

wǒ men bǎ yang.qún fàng chū.qù le we BA goats.group release out.go le

‘We’ve released the goats.’

Based on Pan and Chang (2005), a typical caused-motion construction in Chinese may show various patterns when encoding a caused-motion event. It may be involved in either a causative sentence with non-predicate verb or a BA-construction with V-Preposition patterns (e.g., tā bă chē kāi dào nánjīng le 他把車開到南京了 ‘He drove the car to Nanjing’) or V-Directional patterns (e.g., tā bă mùtong tí shànglái le 他把木桶提上來了 ‘He lifted up the buckets’).

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2.1.4 Proto-Motion Event Schema

Besides the notion of motion events proposed by Talmy (2000), Li (2007), and Goldberg (1995), Liu et al. (2013) also proposes a proto-motion event schema consisting of five essential semantic components: Manner, Route, Direction, Endpoint, and Deictic that pertain to a prototypical motion event. According to Liu (2013), a motion event may be conceptualized as the sequence of how a journey or motional contour is formed with the starting point of ‘a chosen Manner, via a certain Route, in a given Direction, towards a targeted Endpoint and finally approaching the Destination (normally manifested as a Loc-NP).

Optionally, a further specification of Deictic orientation can be added.’ Given the semantic components pertaining to a proto-motion event and incorporating them in an iconic sequence of sub-motion events and morphemes, the following Proto-Motion Event Schema (PMS)⁷ is being proposed:

Figure 4: The Deictic-incorporated Proto-Motion Event Schema (Liu 2013: 19)

7 The double-arrowed head situated in between Locus-NP and Deictic represents the order of the two elements which can be used alternatively, that is to say, either the Deictic can be placed before or after the Loc-NP.

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With the proposed PMS, every motion verb can be plotted under a sub-portion of the event schema. That is to say, every motion verb contains at least one semantic component that encodes a sub-portion of the schema and if there is found to be more than one component involved in a motion verb, the range of its meaning follows the left to right order of the components on the given schema with the default sequence of a serial motion event as illustrated in example 13 below:

(13) 球 [滚]Manner[落]Route[進]Direction[到]Endpoint 洞里[来]Deictic qiú gǔn luò jìn dào dònglǐ lái

ball roll fall enter arrive hole come

‘The ball rolled and fell into the cave near me.’

By observing (13) above, the leftmost verb V1 gǔn 滾 ‘roll’ lexically encodes Manner; V2 luò 落 ‘fall’ encodes both Route and Direction; V₃ jìn 進 ‘enter’ lexicalizes Direction and Endpoint, and the rightmost V4 dào 到 ‘arrive’ specifies Endpoint with an additional deictic marker lái 來 ‘come’ (which is optional) to indicate the relative position to the speaker.

2.1.5 Intermin Summary

Based on Talmy’s (2000) lexicalization patterns which distinguished motion-with-manner and motion-with-cause, Li (2007) further states that typical caused-motion concept involves two subevents (causing event and motion event) that are causally related to each other, and Goldberg (1995) specifies a caused-motion construction with the typical syntactic form of [SUBJ [V OBJ OBL]]. In view of these three studies, we can thus categorize tuī 推 ‘push’ and lā 拉 ‘pull’ as caused-motion verbs.

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Based on Talmy (2000), tuī 推 ‘push’ and lā 拉 ‘pull’ are said to be motion verbs that are conflated with the co-event component Cause. Based on Li (2007), tuī 推 ‘push’ and lā 拉 ‘pull,’ as verbs pertaining to caused-motion, also consist the subevents of causing event and motion event where the former and the latter are causally related to each other. Moreover, based on Goldberg (1995), tuī 推 ‘push’ and lā 拉 ‘pull’ also appear in the typical caused-motion construction with the syntactic pattern of [SUBJ [V OBJ OBL]] as shown in figure 5 below with the incorporation of Talmy (2000), Goldberg (1995) and Li’s (2007) frameworks:

Figure 5: Typical Caused-motion concept of Tuī and Lā

With further incorporation of Liu et al.’s (2013) framework of the Proto-Motion Event Schema, tuī 推 ‘push’ and lā 拉 ‘pull’ can be defined as depicting a serial motion event with the further involvement of a causing event as illustrated below:

Figure 6: Serial Motion Event of Tuī and Lā

我推/拉他 [跑]Manner[到]Endpoint[會議廳]Loc-NP[去]Deictic

Causing event Motion event

Motion event Causing event

[我SUBJ[推/拉V一輛腳踏車 一輛腳踏車OBJ到屋裡OBL]]

Motion + Cause

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2.2 Previous Works on English Push/Pull verbs

2.2.1 Frame-based Approach

The FrameNet Project (http://framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu/), created by the Institute of California Berkeley, is an online lexical database that provides a frame-based analysis of English lexical items. FrameNet provides each frame with its essential frame-specific participant roles, known as Frame Elements (FEs), and the grammatical patterns expressing the frame elements. It aims to provide a frame-based analysis of English lexicon as well as the frame-to-frame relations among verbs. According to FrameNet, there are no specific frames listed for push/pull verbs. Verbs related to push/pull are listed under different frames as shown in figure (7) and a table (table 3) summarizing the push/pull verbs that occur in FrameNet:

Figure 7: The frame relation of Push/Pull verbs in FrameNet⁸

8 Figure 7 is not the original FrameGrapher (which shows the connections of several frames, demonstrates the frame-to-frame relationships by different arrows representing respectively the relationships of Inheritance, Using, Precedes, Perspective_on, Inchoative_of, Causative_of, and See_also.) from FrameNet, this is a combined and merged version by the author of this paper with all the related frames for English Push/Pull

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Table 3: The summary of Push/Pull related frames in FrameNet

Observing FrameNet, Push/Pull verbs are defined in distinct specific frames, and the relations of push/pull verbs are scattered here and there under different frame-specific domains. We observe that the lemmas push and pull mostly occur in two frames: Caused_Motion and Manipulation. Based on FrameNet, other from the two frames, push and pull also occur in other multiple frames. The lemma push also occurs in the frames of Subjective_Influence and Cause_change_of_position_on_a_scale, and pull also appears in Earning_and_Losses, Experience_bodily_harm, and Injest_substance.

However, even though push and pull occur with many other frames, all of them still have an assumption in common of exerting physical force onto someone or something in order to move them towards or away from oneself. By observing FrameNet, we believe that the events of tuī 推 ‘push’ and lā 拉 ‘pull,’ its deictic relations between the Agent and the Moved entity and its fruitful multiplex metaphorical extensions could not be fully accounted since FrameNet based its analysis purely on English lexicon.

PUSH PULL

Frame Name Core Frame Elements Lexical Units

Subjective_influence Action, Cognizer, Situation push Cause_change_of_

position_on_a_scale

Agent, Attribute, Cause, Item push

Caused_Motion Agent, Initial_time, Theme push, pull

Manipulation Agent, Entity push, pull

Earning_and_losses Earner, Earnings push

Experience_bodily_harm Body_part, Experiencer push

Injest_substance Delivery_device, Injester, Substance

push

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2.2.2 Alternation-based Approach

Other from analyzing English verbal semantics from the perspective of frame-based approach, Levin (1993) focuses on English verb classes and alternations through the perspective of alternation-based approach by investigating the expressions and interpretations of different argument realizations of verbs. Based on this approach, Levin (1990: 185) claimed that verbal behaviors provide the key evidence for the investigation of lexical realizations of verbs. According to Levin, Push/Pull verbs are classified into three subclasses⁹: Carry Verbs, Push/Pull verbs, and Split verbs as illustrated in the following table:

Table 4: The summary of Push/Pull related verb classes in Levin (1993)

By observing table 4, it is found that English push/pull verbs are classified under three distinct verb classes based on the differences of verbal behaviors. According to Levin’s classification, it illustrates clearly the syntactic distinctions without any further semantic characteristics of

9 Other from these three subclasses, push is also involved in the verb class of Funnel Verbs. However, we did not consider this verb class since we are more concerned with the verb classes that are shared by both class members of push and pull.

Nora pushed the chair away from her.

Nora pulled the chair towards her.

I pushed the plates off the table.

I pulled the wig and the hair apart.

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each verb classes.

Based on Levin’s classification, we found that the first two verb classes correspond to our syntactic patterns in Chinese. The first verb class of Push/Pull verbs correspond to our syntactic pattern of [NP1 V NP2 PP] such as: wǒ tuī/lā yí-liàng jiǎo-tà-chē dào wūlǐ 我推/拉 一輛腳踏車到屋裡 ‘I pushed/pulled a bicycle into the house’ and the second verb class of Carry verbs correspond to our syntactic pattern of [NP1 V 著 NP2 VP] as in chénglong tuī/lā zhe wǒ méi-mìng-dì pǎo 成龍推/拉著我沒命地跑 ‘Jack Chen pushed/pulled me running madly.’ However, by comparing the similar alternations as well as the semantic-to-syntactic relations, it might not be fully adequate to describe the events of tuī 推 ‘push’ and lā 拉 ‘pull,’

their deictic relations between the Agent and the Moved Entity and their multiplex extended senses, since it is found that Mandarin may display other alternation patterns that are distinct from those of English push/pull verbs, due to the typological variations between the structures of the two languages.

2.3 Previous Works on Chinese Tuī and Lā

2.3.1 Corpus-Based Lexical Semantic Study of Lā

¹⁰

Based on corpus analysis, Liao (2003) manages to identify the semantic properties of Mandarin Force Compulsion verb lā 拉 ‘pull’ through the examination of its grammatical functions and collocational distributions. According to its grammatical functions, Liao (2003) proposes that lā 拉 ‘pull’ can take a direct object with Ba-construction. With further observation through collocational patterns, Liao (2003) observes that lā 拉 ‘pull’ can take

10 This paper originally focuses on the identification of semantic properties of Mandarin Force Compulsion near-synonym set: lā 拉, tuō 拖, and 扯 chě; however, we only considered lā 拉 ‘pull’ for it is more relevant to the present study.

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both concrete ([+animate]) and abstract (time, duration and relationship) object NPs. In the [+animate] concrete object NP, lā 拉 ‘pull’ may take either human entities or body parts (eg., hand). As for the [-animate] concrete object NPs, lā 拉 ‘pull’ may take both small mass hand-manipulable objects (e.g., microphone) and large mass non-hand-manipulable objects (e.g., car). With further view into the post verbal-DE complement, it is found that lā 拉 ‘pull’

often selects a path resultative with a descriptive complement, where it allows both vertical and horizontal directional compliment.

Incorporating Frame-based approach, Liao (2003) classifies lā 拉 ‘pull’ under the frame of Force-Compulsion with the elements of Force (the notion of direction), Mass (the qualities of the objects) and Acceleration (the speed of the action). The notion of lā 拉 ‘pull’ can be read as ‘someone exerts the force on a target and causes a contact on the target.’ In this frame, four participants are involved: Force-Initiator, Acceptor, (Path), and (Goal) where the roles of Path and Goal are optional. With this notion in mind, the core meaning of lā 拉 ‘pull’

posits the sense of movement towards the direction of the force-initiator as in tā lā wǒ qù tā jiālǐ 他拉我去他家裡 ‘He pulled me to his house.’

Adopting the Force Schema Theory, Liao (2003) further illustrates the core meaning of lā 拉 ‘pull’ as well as its extended meanings as illustrated in the following force schemas¹¹:

Figure 8: The core meaning of Lā 拉 (Liao 2003: 41)

11 In the force schemas, TR represents the Trajector and LM represents the Landmark which are generalizations of Figure and Ground in Langacker’s (1986) concepts. The LM is understood as the ground, the TR as an entity and the arrows represent the directionality of PATH.

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Figure 9: Extended meaning of Lā 拉 (Liao 2003: 42)

In the figures above, the force-initiator may either stay still as in wǒ lā yǐzi guò lái 我拉 椅子過來 ‘I pulled the chair (to come over)’ (figure 8) or moves along with the acceptor as in sheng-dàn lǎogonggong hé rén bàn yǎn de xúnlù lā zhe sānlúnchē guàng xiào yuán 聖誕老 公公和人扮演的馴鹿拉著三輪車逛校園 ‘Santa Claus and a people disguised as a reindeer pulled a tricycle strolling through the campus’ (figure 9). In figure 8, the lines pointing to the four different directions signal that the force-initiator does not undergo a translocational movement, while it is the acceptor that moves toward the force-initiator. In figure 9, the

In the figures above, the force-initiator may either stay still as in wǒ lā yǐzi guò lái 我拉 椅子過來 ‘I pulled the chair (to come over)’ (figure 8) or moves along with the acceptor as in sheng-dàn lǎogonggong hé rén bàn yǎn de xúnlù lā zhe sānlúnchē guàng xiào yuán 聖誕老 公公和人扮演的馴鹿拉著三輪車逛校園 ‘Santa Claus and a people disguised as a reindeer pulled a tricycle strolling through the campus’ (figure 9). In figure 8, the lines pointing to the four different directions signal that the force-initiator does not undergo a translocational movement, while it is the acceptor that moves toward the force-initiator. In figure 9, the

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