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eBook details

• Title: Motifs in the Formation of Antonymous Compounds in Chinese.
• Author : Southwest Journal of Linguistics
• Release Date : January 01, 2008
• Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 249 KB

Description

ABSTRACT: This study is an attempt to deal with the derivation, interpretation and formation of antonymous compounds, a unique morphological and rhetorical device in the Chinese language. A corpus of antonymous compounds has been designed and developed. It consists of all the antonymous compounds drawn from a dictionary of Chinese antonyms, in which there are a total of four thousand thirty-nine pairs of antonyms. Phonological, morphosyntactic and semantic features of antonymous compounds have been described and explained. Motifs behind the ordering of conjoined members in antonymous compounds have been analyzed. The findings in this study have shown that, in the process of its formation, an antonymous compound is subject to human experience and perception conditioned by cultural values. The findings have clearly shown that the ordering of conjoined members in antonymous compounds is not arbitrary. When creating antonymous compounds, the Chinese people tend to coordinate or combine the bipolar terms either by following logical sequences which are based on human experience, or by following cultural value-loaded sequences which are based on human value systems. The findings provide some further evidence to support the argument that human language is not an autonomous, self-contained system. 1. INTRODUCTION. Arbitrariness is often regarded as one of the fundamental principles of modern linguistics. Ever since the time of Saussure, linguists, as well as others especially interested in language study, have generally insisted upon the arbitrary relationship between the form and the meaning of linguistic signs, and the arbitrariness in word formation and language structures. As Waugh (1993:71) has summarized:

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