(To appear in Journal of Chinese Linguistics)
www.lancs.ac.uk/postgrad/xiaoz/papers/Negation in Chinese.doc
NEGATION IN CHINESE: A CORPUS-BASED STUDY1
Richard Xiao, Tony McEnery
Lancaster University, United Kingdom
ABSTRACT
This article explores negation in Chinese on the basis of spoken and written corpora of Mandarin Chinese. The use of corpus data not only reveals central tendencies in language based on quantitative data, it also provides typical examples attested in authentic contexts. In this study we will first introduce the two major negators bu and mei (meiyou) and discuss their semantic and genre distinctions. Following this is an exploration of the interaction between negation and aspect marking. We will then move on to discuss the scope and focus of negation, transferred negation, and finally double negation and redundant negation.
SUBJECT KEYWORDS
Negation, Mandarin Chinese, aspect marking, genre, corpora
1. INTRODUCTION
While negation in Chinese has been subject to intensive study for decades, many issues remain unresolved. For example, many competing and even conflicting characterisations have been proposed of the distinctions between bu and mei/meiyou (hereafter referred to as mei unless otherwise stated); there is also little consensus over such issues as whether the progressive can be negated by bu or mei; many generalisations about negation found in the literature cannot account for attested language data; the more fine-grained distinctions in the distribution of negators across genres are largely unexplored. A common failure of those studies is that they have not taken account of attested data, being
www.lancs.ac.uk/postgrad/xiaoz/papers/Negation in Chinese.doc
NEGATION IN CHINESE: A CORPUS-BASED STUDY1
Richard Xiao, Tony McEnery
Lancaster University, United Kingdom
ABSTRACT
This article explores negation in Chinese on the basis of spoken and written corpora of Mandarin Chinese. The use of corpus data not only reveals central tendencies in language based on quantitative data, it also provides typical examples attested in authentic contexts. In this study we will first introduce the two major negators bu and mei (meiyou) and discuss their semantic and genre distinctions. Following this is an exploration of the interaction between negation and aspect marking. We will then move on to discuss the scope and focus of negation, transferred negation, and finally double negation and redundant negation.
SUBJECT KEYWORDS
Negation, Mandarin Chinese, aspect marking, genre, corpora
1. INTRODUCTION
While negation in Chinese has been subject to intensive study for decades, many issues remain unresolved. For example, many competing and even conflicting characterisations have been proposed of the distinctions between bu and mei/meiyou (hereafter referred to as mei unless otherwise stated); there is also little consensus over such issues as whether the progressive can be negated by bu or mei; many generalisations about negation found in the literature cannot account for attested language data; the more fine-grained distinctions in the distribution of negators across genres are largely unexplored. A common failure of those studies is that they have not taken account of attested data, being