Lectal Variation of the Two Chinese Causative Auxiliaries
Journal
ROCLING 2020 - 32nd Conference on Computational Linguistics and Speech Processing
Pages
163 - 177
ISBN
9789869576932
Date Issued
2020-01-01
Author(s)
Abstract
This paper aims to investigate the variation between two Chinese causative auxiliaries shi ‘使’ and rang ‘讓’ from a corpus-based perspective. We conduct a logistic regression analysis to the Chinese data extracted from two corpora and propose a direct/indirect distinction (Verhagen and Kemmer 1997) between the two auxiliary verbs. The results retrieved by the regression model show that the theory of direct/indirect causation provides a reasonable account for the characteristics and lexical meanings of the verbs. We indicate that the verb shi is correlated with “direct causation” because it is typically used when inanimate participants are involved in the causing event, in which the force initiated by the cause inevitably and directly leads to the resulted stage of the causee. On the other hand, the verb rang should be classified as “indirect causation” because it is typically used in scenarios where animate participants are both involved, and some extra force besides the causer also plays a role in the effected event.
Subjects
causation | language variation | logistic regression | R statistics
Type
conference paper