Title
What Can You “Eat” in Chinese: A Usage-Based Approach to Chinese Language and Culture Based on Contemporary and Historical Corpora
Abstract
The behavior of the lexis 吃chi ‘eat’ in Chinese has been a puzzle for many Chinese linguists. Utterances such as:
在中国人民吃筷子, 在西方人民吃刀叉
zai Zhonguo renmin chi kuaizi, zai xifang renmin chi daocha
‘The Chinese eat chopsticks; Westerners eat knives and forks’
are acceptable to some native speakers but may not make sense in other languages. While many proposals have been made in terms of metaphorical/metonymic extensions, others have appealed to Chinese culinary culture for explanation.
The goal of this talk was to show that noun-verb associations can be better understood by adopting a usage-based approach as exemplified by the Emergent Argument Structure Hypothesis proposed by Hopper and Thompson (2001). Based on data from contemporary and historical corpora, Hongyin Tao showed that the nature of the association of arguments and verbs is a dynamic, discourse process, as evidenced by the fact that there has been much expansion as well as reduction of the scope of the ‘patient’ argument of 吃 in Chinese. This study thus raised questions about the complex relationship among grammatical structure, language use, cognition, and culture.
Biography
Hongyin Tao is a professor of Chinese language and linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He also holds an honorary Distinguished Chair Professor position at the National Taiwan Normal University and was a Fulbright Canada Research Chair with the University of Alberta in 2022. His research and teaching focus on the social, cultural, and interactional aspects of Chinese language use in context.