Mandarin posture verbs

Cardinality, patterns of usage, and constructional preferences

Bibliographic Data

ID21822778
AuthorsJohn Newman (0000-0002-9978-0689, University of Alberta), Ying Zhang (0000-0001-6214-2440, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies)
Year2025
Volume16
Issue1
Pages28-54
Publication date2025-02-06
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueChinese Language and Discourse An International and Interdisciplinary Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1877-7031 • E-ISSN: 1877-8798
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/cld.00048.new
OpenAlexW4398168721
LanguageEN
References cited21

Posture verbs have attracted considerable interest within Cognitive Linguistics. This study continues this line of research by investigating usage-based patterns associated with these verbs when used in their literal posture senses. The data for the study comes from the Lancaster Corpus of Mandarin Chinese and the CALLHOME Mandarin Corpus. We investigate the frequencies and distributions of the Mandarin posture verbs 坐 zuò ‘sit’, 站 zhàn ‘stand’, and 躺 tǎng ‘lie’ in four construction types: directional constructions, aspectual suffixes, serial verb constructions, and locative constructions. The analysis confirms the primacy of zuò, zhàn , and tǎng and, among other results, reveals a significant absence of locative phrases with the dynamic forms of the verbs as used with directionals

Linguistics · Mandarin Chinese · Categorization, perception, and language · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity · Philosophy · Psychology

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