Meaning patterns of the NP de VP construction in modern Chinese: approaches of covarying collexeme analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis

The NP de VP construction in modern Chinese has been of constant interest to theoretical linguists. Previous studies foregrounded word classes of lexical items in the VP slot, semantic relationships between the VP and the NP, and lexical items that could fill both the VP and the NP slots of the construction. However, in this research, we highlighted typical meanings of this construction and the denoted meaning patterns of lexical items in both the VP and the NP slots by drawing on the covarying collexeme analysis and the hierarchical cluster analysis, respectively. The findings demonstrate that typical meanings of this construction generally include the pairing of "regulations" in the NP slot and "implementation" in the VP slot, the pairing of "systems" in the NP slot and "establishment" in the VP slot, and the pairing of "results" in the NP slot and "achievement" in VP slot. Meaning patterns of the lexical items with significant attraction in the VP slot briefly incorporate such clusters as "cognition", "augmentation", "implementation", "achievement", "establishment", and "report"; and those in the NP slot generally include such patterns as "internal traits", "medical names", "regulations", "results", "systems", and "business". The significance of this study lies in that it scientifically identified instances that are capable of expressing the typical meaning of the NP de VP construction and uncovered objectively and precisely the denoted meaning patterns of lexical items in the VP slot and the NP slot of the construction.

Jiangping Zhou