Abstract
Verbs involving the body can reflect the way of human cognition. A type of such body verbs which describes the whole body movements is less examined. This study has selected a typical category, namely, verbs of saluting, to examine their syntactic features. Single sentences have been extracted and filtered from several Chinese corpora and annotated based on dependency grammar. This study then analyzed their syntactic features from the aspects of syntactic dependencies and the intensity of syntactic collocations. It is found that this type of verbs often acts as heads of sentences, accounted for almost 60%. A case study of 行礼 xínglǐ ‘salute’ shows that its overall intensity of syntactic collocations is 1.90. This study provides a research paradigm for the research on Chinese verbs and lexicography.
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Notes
- 1.
Sogou lab: http://www.sogou.com/labs/resource/t.php.
- 2.
BCC: http://bcc.blcu.edu.cn.
- 3.
- 4.
People’ s Daily, Reference News, Tencent News: https://github.com/liuhuanyong/ChineseDiachronicCorpus.
- 5.
https://people.ubuntu.com/~happyaron/l10n/GB(T) 15834–2011.html.
- 6.
Please refer to the appendix for the explanation of the terms.
- 7.
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Acknowledgment
This study is funded by the University of Macau (Project No.: MYRG2022-00191-FAH and MYRG2019-00013-FAH). Ms. Shuchi Chen helped with making annotation in the very early stage. This study has re-annotated every sentence.
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Appendix
Appendix
Terms in LTPFootnote 7 | Terms in this study | Abbreviation of LTP | English translation in this study | Examples in this study |
|---|---|---|---|---|
前置宾语-动词关系 | 前置宾语-动词关系 | FOB | The fronting object-verb relation | / |
兼语结构 | 兼语结构 | DBL | The pivotal construction | / |
主谓关系 | 主谓关系 | SBV | The subject-object relation | 行礼完毕。 Xínglǐ wánbì salute_over ‘Salute is over.’ (完毕 wánbì ‘over’ → 行礼 xínglǐ ‘salute’) |
动宾关系 | 动宾关系 | VOB | The verb-object relation | 他们未必知道你给他们行礼。 Tāmen wèibì zhīdào nǐ gěi tāmen xānglǐ they_may not_know_you_give_they_salute ‘They may not know you saluted them.’ (知道 zhīdào ‘know’ → 行礼 xínglǐ ‘salute’) |
定中关系 | 定中关系 | ATT | The attribute-head relation | 两人行礼后站直身子。 Liǎng rén xínglǐ hòu zhànzhí shēnzi two_people_salute_after_stand up_body ‘Two people stood up after saluting.’ (后 hòu ‘after’ → 行礼 xínglǐ ‘salute’) |
状中结构 | 状中关系 | ADV | The adverbial-head relation | 华航员工向罹难者行礼致意。 Huáháng yuángōng xiàng línànzhě xínglǐ zhìyì China Airlines_employee_to_victim_salute_ give one’s regards ‘China Airlines employees saluted the victims and gave their regards.’ (行礼 xínglǐ ‘salute’ → 向 xiàng ‘to’) |
动补结构 | 动补关系 | CMP | The verb-complement relation | 查干感动得向他们深深鞠躬致谢。 Chágàn gǎndòng de xiàng tāmen shēnshēn jūgōng zhìxiè Chagan_moved_DE_to_they_deeply_bow_thanks ‘Chagan was so moved that he bowed deeply to them.’ (感动 gǎndòng ‘moved’ → 鞠躬 jūgōng ‘bow’) |
并列关系 | 并列关系 | COO | The coordination relation | 他立即跪下去行礼。 Tā lìjí guì xiàqù xínglǐ he_immediately_kneel_down_salute ‘He immediately kneeled and saluted.’ (跪 guì ‘kneel down’ → 行礼 xínglǐ ‘salute’) |
介宾关系 | 介宾关系 | POB | The preposition-object relation | 梅克林格用郑重的一个行礼接受了皇帝拙劣的玩笑。 Méikèlíngé yòng zhèngzhòng de yī gè xínglǐ jiēshòu le huángdì zhuōliè de wánxiào Mecklinger_use_solemn_DE_one_Classifier_salute_accept_ASP_Emperor_clumsy_DE_joke ‘Mecklinger accepted the Emperor’s clumsy joke with a solemn salute.’ (用 yòng ‘use’ → 行礼 xínglǐ ‘salute’) |
左附加关系 | 左附加关系 | LAD | The left adjunct relation | / |
右附加关系 | 右附加关系 | RAD | The right adjunct relation | / |
独立结构 | 独立结构 | IS | The independent structure | / |
核心 | 句子与核心的关系 | HED | The sentence-head relation | 守卫向她行礼。 Shǒuwèi xiàng tā xínglǐ guard_to_she_salute ‘The guard salutes her.’ (行礼 xínglǐ ‘salute’ is the head of this sentence.) |
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Wang, S. (2023). The Syntactic Features of Chinese Verbs of Saluting. In: Su, Q., Xu, G., Yang, X. (eds) Chinese Lexical Semantics. CLSW 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13495. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28953-8_33
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