A corpus-based approach to studying chinese literal and fictive motion sentences in fiction

Abstract

This study aims to determine the distribution of three senses of motion verbs in Mandarin Chinese. A fiction corpus was thus constructed to search for 32 motion verb phrases and collect sentences with these motion verbs. These were classified into three senses: (1) literal meanings; (2) fictive motion involving no actual movement in space; and (3) fictive motion involving metaphorical meanings. The corpus data showed that literal meanings had the highest frequency among the three sense categories, followed by metaphorical meanings and, finally, fictive motions. In addition, it was found that literal and fictive motions functioned as intransitive verbs, often expressing location information. However, metaphorical motions functioned as transitive verbs, often expressing themes. Finally, it was found that the preferential use for some verbs was metaphorical in meaning, while others appear to be used as fictive in meaning. The current study has implications for word sense disambiguation in dealing with multiple meanings of motion verbs in Mandarin Chinese.