A Corpus-Based Semantic Analysis of the Pattern 'ba plus NP plus VP' in Mandarin Chinese

Great significance has been ascribed to the pattern "ba+NP+VP" due to its high frequency and various usages. Based on a 2.2-million-word corpus, this study aims to answer the following questions: How are lexical items associated with this pattern? How should semantic associations within it be best described? What are the key semantic subcategories and typical usages of this pattern? The major innovation of this study lies in the adoption of the three-level semantic coding system of the New Synonym Dictionary, and the utilization of co-occurrence networks for better visualization and description of language data. The results indicate that the pattern exhibits a restriction on the choice of N(P) and V(P). Moreover, semantic categories of head nouns and verbs are associated with each other, and simultaneously confined by this pattern. Ab (person) and Id (action of upper limbs) constitute the most important semantic subcategories of noun and verb, respectively, in this pattern. Finally, four typical usages of this pattern are summarized through co-occurrence networks.