A Corpus-based Lexical Semantic Study of Mandarin Verbs of zhidao and liaojie

A Corpus-based Lexical Semantic Study of Mandarin Verbs of zhidao and liaojie LIU Yi The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Abstract This study intends to explore a Chinese synonym pair “liaojie” and “zhidao” via the Chinese GigaWord Corpus. Detailed analysis of the pair is conducted to reveal their different semantic and syntactic features. In particular, the author analyzed the event structure module and role module of the two words based on MARVS theory and tested that the two meanings of “liaojie” are two senses instead of two meaning facets. This study demonstrates that a corpus is a powerful tool for examining synonyms and that MARVS theory is practical for distinguishing senses and meaning facets. 1 Introduction A large number of synonyms in modern Chinese can be found. These synonyms have very similar meanings and can sometimes be used interchangeably. However, they often demonstrate subtle differences in terms of syntax, semantics and pragmatics, which are difficult to distinguish even for native speakers. 1.1 The Theoretical Framework The module-Attribute Representation of Verbal Semantics (MARVS) is a theory of the representation of verbal semantics that is on the basis of Mandarin Chinese data (Huang et al., 2000). The theory put forward event structure modules and role modules and two sets of attributes: event- internal attributes and role-internal attributes. Through analysis of the model, the differences of synonyms can be presented more transparently. 1.2 The Corpus In recent years, the corpus has been widely used as a tool for comparative analysis of synonyms. Sketch engine has been proved as a powerful tool for 1http://wordsketch.ling.sinica.edu.tw/cws/ lexicography and language research as it is able to explore corpora as well as build and manage corpora (Hong, 2014). This study utilizes Annotated Chinese Gigaword Corpus1 containing over 1.4 billion words from Taiwan Central News Agency, Mainland Xinhua News Agency and Lianhe Zaobao in Singapore with the combination of the powerful linguistic research tool, Chinese Word Sketch (CWS), containing core functions such as word sketch, concordance, and thesaurus (Kilgarriff et al., 2014). 1.3 Previous Studies Zhang (2000) studied the event module of “zhidao” and “liaojie” and identified and “zhidao” is completive resultative and “liaojie” is a dual process-state. Lai (2008) conducted a semantic analysis of seven verbs of perception, including “zhidao”, and classified them into groups according to their semantic features. Chen (2009) analyzed the verbs of “zhidao” and “mingbai” and followed ono- prototypical interrogatives. Liu and Hu (2008) regarded “zhidao” as a cognizer belonging to the knowing frame and are connected with knowledge and proposition. 2. Initial Observation 1.1 Two Words in Dictionary As shown in Table 1, the meanings of the two words demonstrate great similarities. Both dictionaries use close synonyms to define them, making it hard for learners to distinguish the nuances between the two words. It is worth noticing that the meaning of “zhidao” contains one sense with the meaning of knowing as the centre. However, the meaning of “liaojie” consists of two layers of meanings. One is to understand and comprehend. Another is to investigate …

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