Abstract
Circumposition is an important syntactic structure in Chinese grammar with unique typological value. By studying the structural and semantic typological features of prepositions and postpositions in circumpostions, we can better the theoretical framework of Chinese adpositional system. The present study analyses the semantics of a typical spatial circumposition – “zaishang/li/zhong” (在…上/里/中), and the findings suggest that prepositions and postposition bear different semantic functions by setting restrictions on the law of adposition omission. Two general rules serve as the semantic motivations for adposition omission: the mandatory rule of syntactic semantics and the rule of spatial semantic self-sufficiency.
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Cai, L. (2013). The Semantic Functions of Prepositions and Postpositions in Chinese Spatial Circumpositions – A Perspective from Language Typology. In: Liu, P., Su, Q. (eds) Chinese Lexical Semantics. CLSW 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8229. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-45185-0_27
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-45185-0_27
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-45184-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-45185-0
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