问题的轻重.PDFVIP

Word Ordering in Chinese Opposite Compounds Jing Ding() and Chu-Ren Huang Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong amanda.ding@connect.polyu.hk, Churen.huang@.hk Abstract. The smantic factor is considered to play an important role in deciding the word order of compounds. Previous studies on Chinese opposites generally agree with the Pollyanna Principle, but do not offer detailed statistical analysis, especially for opposite compounds. In this paper, we go through 315 opposite pairs in Sinica Corpus and the result shows that, for Chinese opposite com- pounds, prosodic factor and cultural hierarchy are also crucial for ordering. Keywords: Chinese opposite compound · Pollyanna Principle · Corpus 1 Introduction According to the Pollyanna Principle (Matlin Stang, 1978), the positive or evaluatively (more) positive members are more favored than the negative ones and therefore preferred to be placed in the front of the negative ones. Such a hypothesis is supported by some early dated observations. Tang (1979) mentioned that the word order of “antonymous coordinate construction” (:18) features having the positive meaning one in the front position and the negative, in the latter position. That was, he interpreted, because the positive one also carried the neutral, or unmarked, meaning. For the exception of 轻重 [qing1zhong4] (weight), for example, 问题的轻重 [wen4ti2 de0 qing1zhong4], Tang thought it was equal to “the importance (of the issue)” and referred to a state, rather than a physical measurement. And therefore it did not follow the general order. Similar cases like qing1zhong4 are