Lectal Variation of the Two Chinese Causative Auxiliaries

Lectal Variation of the Two Chinese Causative Auxiliaries Cing-Fang Shih, Mao-Chang Ku, Shu-Kai Hsieh Graduate Institute of Linguistics, National Taiwan University r08142004@ntu.edu.tw, d08142002@ntu.edu.tw, shukaihsieh@ntu.edu.tw 摘要 本文旨在從語料庫的觀點研究中文兩個使役助動詞使 ‘cause’ 和讓 ‘let’ 之間的差異。 我們對從兩個語料庫中提取的中文語料進行邏輯迴歸分析，認為此兩個助動詞之間的差 異可視為 Verhagen and Kemmer (1997) 所提出的直接/間接使役區分。回歸模型得到的 結果表明，直接/間接使役的理論為動詞的特徵和詞義提供了合理的解釋。我們指出，動 詞使與「直接使役」相關，因為它通常使用於涉及無生命參與者的使役事件中，在這種 情況下，起因論旨角色必然且直接地導致受使役者的結果狀態。另一方面，讓應該被歸 類為「間接使役」，因為它通常用於涉及有生命參與者的場景，並且除了使動者之外， 亦有其他一些驅動來源也導致使役事件的發生。 Abstract This paper aims to investigate the variation between two Chinese causative auxiliaries shi ‘使’ and rang ‘讓’ from a corpus-based perspective. We conduct a logistic regression analysis to the Chinese data extracted from two corpora and propose a direct/indirect distinction (Verhagen and Kemmer 1997) between the two auxiliary verbs. The results retrieved by the regression model show that the theory of direct/indirect causation provides a reasonable account for the characteristics and lexical meanings of the verbs. We indicate that the verb shi is correlated with “direct causation” because it is typically used when inanimate participants are involved in the causing event, in which the force initiated by the cause inevitably and directly leads to the resulted stage of the causee. On the other hand, the verb rang should be classified as “indirect causation” because it is typically used in scenarios where animate participants are both involved, and some extra force besides the causer also plays a role in the effected event. 關鍵詞：語言變異，使役結構，邏輯迴歸，R 語言統計 The 32nd Conference on Computational Linguistics and Speech Processing (ROCLING 2020) Taipei, Taiwan, September 24–26, 2020. The Association for Computational Linguistics and Chinese Language Processing 163 Keywords: language variation, causation, logistic regression, R statistics. 1. Introduction The causative construction has been a debatable subject in linguistic studies. It is widely accepted that there are two participants encoded in a causative construction, which are the causer and the causee. The causing event led by the causer, and the caused event formed by the cause, are two components of a causative construction [1]. Verhagen and Kemmer [2] described the causative verb as a ‘causal predicate’, and the infinitive in the construction is called ‘effected predicate’, which includes two varieties: intransitive and transitive. In Mandarin Chinese, causative verbs shi ‘使’ and rang ‘讓’ can form causative constructions, see (1). (1) a. 你又說了幾句讓我印象深刻的話 nǐ yòu shuō-le jǐ-jù ràng wǒ you again say-PERF several-CL make me yìnxiàng shēnkè de huà impression deep MOD words ‘You again say something that has deeply impressed me.’ b. 現代通訊科技使我們可以天天通話 xiàndài tōngxùn kējì shǐ wǒmen modern communications technology make us kěyǐ tiāntiān tōnghuà able every.day call ‘Modern communications technology enables us to call every day.’ In (1), the subject before shi or rang is the causer, and the object after the predicate is the causee. Constructions with causal predicates shi and rang are categorized as direct and indirect causation, respectively. Most of the time, direct causation is more likely to indicate non-human interaction than the indirect one is. To clarify the usages of the two causal predicates, this study is going to demonstrate a corpus-based regression analysis to explore the word choice between shi and rang. Furthermore, the regression analysis explains how the property of the causal The 32nd Conference on Computational Linguistics and …

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