Title: A Corpus-Driven Study of the Meaning-Shift Unit of Chinese Intensifiers

Abstract: Meaning-Shift Unit Theory is the latest theory of meaning in corpus linguistics, which inherits and develops the theoretical connotations of the Extended Unit of Meaning. This paper analyzes the meaning units of Wanquan in the Chinese National Corpus (the CNC, also known as Guojia Yuwei Yuliaoku), including the canonical forms and their variants, as well as their connection to meanings. The results show that meaning-shift unit is influenced by the categories of co-selection, in which semantic prosody plays a decisive role, and that Wanquan has four types of meaning-shift units, each of which has a canonical form and several possible variants. It is shown that Meaning-Shift Unit Theory is applicable to Chinese language studies, which in turn enriches the applicability of this theory.

Keywords: meaning-shift unit, Chinese intensifier, semantic prosody, corpus-driven approach, textual configuration, canonical form, variant

Author: Guobing Liu, Professor, Faculty of International Studies, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang, Henan, China; Xiaolian Zhang, Faculty of International Studies, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang, Henan, China.