A cognitive-functional approach to topic constructions in Beijing Mandarin
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Mandarin Chinese has long been accepted as a topic-prominent language.However, a consensus has never been reached on how to define or characte rize the notion of topic.Given the pragmatic orientation of the notion and the heterogeneity of topic-comment constructions, a cognitive-functional approach has been adopted in this research to analyze a spoken corpus of Beijing Mandarin.On the basis of what has been found about structurally identiflred topics in the corpus, I have argued that topic constructions are best taken as specific instantiations of the schema of Conceptual Reference Point for the ensuing comments.' Spoken data are more indicative of online processing than are written texts.Taking advantage of this, I have examined how pauses and pause particles are interrelated with topic marking and topic verbalization.A comparison between marked grammatical subjects and unmarked ones has revealed that the former are more heavily coded.Following the iconicity principle or the accessibility theory as proposed by Givón ( 1983), Ariel (1988, 1990), etc., topics convey more information than subjects.by Linjun ilt The investigation into the discourse use of several high frequency pause particles, namely ne, bø, ma, a (and its phonetic variants), and two lexical topic markers, i.e., dehua and laijiang, shows that they, like Japanese wa or eyebrow raise in ASL, are all polysemous: they fulfill different discourse functions by marking topics of different semantic roles and information statuses.These topic markers are also observed to occur successively and co-occur with each other in topic marking.The richness in topic markers and topic marking manners further evidences topic as a complex category that demands a schematic char acterization.Following detailed analysis of topic instantiations in the spoken corpus, a schematization of topic as a complex linguistic category is expounded first horizontally then vertically.Topic as a schema is then characterized as follows: topics of all semantic roles may fulfill the function of conceptual reference point in spontaneous speech, and the reference point may sometimes be objective, especially when the relationship between topic and its target referent(s) resembles some objective ones, such as the possessive or the part-whole relationship.further complicates the issue.It seems that a rigorous definition in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions does not fit for such a loaded notion.A new approach is thus in order.In what follows I discuss what insights cognitive linguistics in general can give us in addressing the issue of topic in Mandarin Chinese.1.2 Cognitive Linguistics as an Alternative 1.2.1 Outlining cognitive linguistics and its relevance to this research Cognitive linguistics is a cover term for a variety of approaches, methodologies and emphases which are unified by a set of assumptions.The foundational point of cognitivelinguistics is simply that "language is all about meaning" (Geeraerts 2008:3); that is, language is viewed as an instrument for organizing, processing and conveying information.Cognitive linguistics makes several basic assumptions, and two of them are highly relevant to this research.One is that Cognitive Grammar views language as a usage-based system (e.g.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".