The Subtype 2: the Sense of Bring with (xīdài 攜帶)

In addition to the the sense of lead, dài 帶 ‘bring’ is also frequently associated with the non-motional sense bring with. This section aims to discover the semantics of dài 帶 ‘bring’ in the use of bring with in relation to the prototypical sense bring to.

Dài 帶 ‘bring’ in the use of bring with typically describes an event where the Agent brings with a Theme along with him/her without encoding the co-motion of Theme, and such an event usually requires the Theme to be a non-human portable object that can usually be put onto the body. Unlike the uses of bring to and lead, such an event denotes a relatively stative event in which no movement of the participants in the event occurs but only the act of ‘taking something’ on the Agent’s part. Figure 7 gives a conceptual schema to illustrate such an event, where the Agent and Theme can be taken as a whole since the Theme entity must stay with the Agent in the whole bringing event.

Figure 6. The Conceptual Schema for dài 帶 ‘bring’ in Sense of Bring with

Given the basic definition of dài 帶 ‘bring’ in the use of bring with, the next question to be asked is how such an event is semantically related to the prototypical caused-motion event? A cognitive semantic-to-syntactic account will be given in the following section.

5.2.2.1 Semantic Relation between Bring to and Bring with

As mentioned in Section 5.1, dài 帶 ‘bring’ in the caused-motion bringing sense has been defined as the prototype for the meaning of dài 帶 ‘bring’. Therefore, other meanings manifested by dài 帶 ‘bring’ are assumed to be one of the central meanings within the prototypical semantic category. Based on the grammatical distribution and the prototypicality of the participant roles of bring with, we assume that the sense of bring with may also be one of the subtypical meanings that bears a certain relation to the prototypical sense. The study demonstrates that the semantic correlation between bring to and bring with can be accounted for through the conception of semantic profile, and can be supported along with constructional evidence.

We have postulated that the semantic base of dài 帶 ‘bring’ is the representation of the co-motion event, where the concurrent spatial movement of Agent and Theme towards a locational goal is realized. As for dài 帶 ‘bring’ in the sense of bring with, it is on the other hand describes a non-motional event which specifies how the Theme is being carried by the Agent. In light of semantic profiling, we postulate that the co-motion event will profile the co-existence relationships between the Agent and

Agent_Carrier > Theme_Entity

Theme. In other words, the co-existence relationship between the Agent and Theme can be highlighted as a result of the caused-motion event. Accordingly, we may see the differences in the following examples:

(23) a. Co-motion: 我帶了袋子到學校

wǒ dài le dàizi dào xuéxiào I bring ASP bag arrive school ‘I brought the bag to the school.’

b. Co-existence: 我帶了袋子 wǒ dài le dàizi I bring ASP bag

‘I brought the bag with me.’

From (23), it is shown that the co-existence relation between the Agent Carrier wǒ 我 ‘I’ and the Theme Entity dài zi 袋子 ‘bag’ is assumed to be resulted from the caused-motion event where the Agent is actually bringing the bag to some locational goal. Thus, dài 帶 ‘bring’ in the sense of bring with does not specify the motional act of Agent and Theme; instead, only the result of the motion event of dài 帶 ‘bring’ is being highlighted. Therefore, the result of the bringing event is that the brought entity is with the Agent, either on the Agent or Agent’s body part. With such a connection, the Agent Mover and the Theme Co-movee in the caused-motion bringing event may be respectively extended to be a Carrier and the Entity being carried in describing a non-motional bringing event. A related conceptual schema is given to represent the semantic relation of bring to and bring with, shown as below:

Figure 7. The Conceptual Schema of Bring with in Relation to Bring to

5.2.2.2 The Semantic-to-Syntactic Correlation

Given the semantic account on the sense relation between bring to and bring with, this section aims to further provide a constructional account that supports the above analysis. Since dài 帶 ‘bring’ in the sense of bring with denotes a resultative state of the bringing event, and thus describes a co-existence relation between the Agent and Theme, we may wonder how such a semantic interpretation can be connected to the syntactic behaviors? This section presents the semantic-to-syntactic correlations that reflect the semantics of dài 帶 ‘bring’ in the sense of bring with.

To begin with, the defining pattern for dài 帶 ‘bring’ in the use of bring with is associated with a basic transitive pattern ‘Agent_Carrier [NP1]<*<Theme_Entity [NP2]’. However, due to that the sense of bring with can be regarded as one of the semantic perspectives of the co-motion event conceptualized in the prototype of dài 帶

‘bring’, we may assume a backgrounded motion event that occurs to the event encoded in the sense of bring with. Therefore, dài 帶 ‘bring’ in (23b) can also be compatible with a caused-motion construction which depicts a motional event, such as in (23a). In addition, sometimes the final location of the Theme in relation to the Agent may also be lexically specified in the locative zài 在 ‘on/in’ phrase, and such a location is mostly the body part of the Agent, as shown in (24).

(24) 我帶了袋子在身上

wǒ dài le dàizi zài shēnshàng I bring bag on my body

‘I brought the bag with me.’

Moreover, it is also found that such a final location (i.e., the Agent’s body part) can further extend to be the Agent Carrier via the metaphorical transfer: Body Part is Agent Carrier, such as in wǒ shēnshàng dài le dàizi 我身上帶了袋子 ‘I brings the bag with me.’ On the other hand, since dài 帶 ‘bring’ in the use of bring with highlights a non-motion but co-presence relation between the Agent and Theme, the event itself does not emphasize the causative relations but the direct manipulation between the Agent and the Theme. Therefore, we can see why dài 帶 ‘bring’ in the sense of bring with often collocates with a manner verb of hand motion, such as in jiádài 挾帶 and xīdài 攜帶 that further specifies the way how the Agent brings with the Theme.

To sum up, the above collo-constructional patterns have provided and demonstrated the syntactic evidence that support the given semantic distinction and correlation between the prototypical and subtypical meaning of dài 帶 ‘bring’ bring to and bring with. Therefore, it again reveals that the semantic-to-syntactic distinction and correlation between the polysemic verb dài 帶 ‘bring’ can be well-substantiated through a close inspection on the grammatical performances.