Mandarin and English Event Cognitive Alignment From Corpus-Based Semantic Fusion Model Perspective

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Cognitive Science
• Psychology

Background:

• Simple sentences with two verbs present unique challenges for understanding event alignment.
• Semantic roles and their fusion are key to explaining how events are cognitively processed.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish a semantic fusion model explaining cognitive event alignment in Chinese and English simple sentences with two verbs.
• To investigate the universality and cognitive reality of semantic role fusion.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of 20,280 Chinese and English simple sentences containing two verbs from literary and corpus data.
• Classification of semantic fusion into five categories based on occurrence frequencies.
• Application of cognitive linguistics principles to explain noun (N) participation in dual semantic profiles.

Main Results:

• Identified five major semantic fusion categories with varying frequencies across Chinese and English.
• Demonstrated that a single noun (N) can fuse two semantic roles due to its double semantic profiles.
• Confirmed the universality of semantic role fusion as a cognitive behavior in language users.

Conclusions:

• The proposed semantic fusion model effectively explains event alignment in sentences with two verbs.
• Semantic fusion is a psychologically real and fundamental aspect of human language cognition.
• The findings support the cross-linguistic applicability of the semantic fusion model for event alignment.