Analysing logical meanings in Chinese: a discourse semantic perspective

1. Introduction

Logical meaning, which is broadly concerned with relations between clauses, has long been of interest in linguistics. In particular, describing logical meanings in the language of Chinese is a continuing concern, especially at the stratum/level of lexicogrammar, such as Wang (1943), Li and Thompson (1981), Halliday and Matthiessen (1999), Peng (2000), Halliday and McDonald (2004), Hu et al. (2005), Li (2007), Kim, Heffernan, and Jing (2016) and Hsu (2017), just to name a few. These studies have claimed a couple of issues on the description of logical meanings in Chinese from a lexicogrammatical perspective. A most representative issue is the ambiguous identification of logical relations in Chinese due to its distinct feature of frequent absence of explicit conjunctive elements between clauses (see more in, e.g., Kim, Heffernan, and Jing 2016; Hsu 2017). It is acknowledged that such distinct features have caused difficulties in the grammatical analysis of logical meanings in Chinese.

Against this background, this study departures from the stratum of lexicogrammar and sets out at the stratum of discourse semantics to introduce an alternative approach in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to analysing logical meanings in Chinese. SFL is a linguisitc theory developed by M.A.K. Halliday in the second half of the twentieth century (see, e.g., Halliday and Matthiessen 2014 for more introduction to SFL). The choice of using SFL as the theoretical framework is because a number of analytical tools and concepts in the SFL model enable us to account for language choices in a systemic way. Specifically in regard to logical meaning, it can be accounted for through the system of connexion if the discourse semantic approach is adopted.

There is one article, i.e., Hao (forthcoming), describing logical meanings in Chinese scientific texts according to the system of connexion in the discourse semantics. However, Hao has only touched upon temporal and causal relations without other types, or other aspects of logical meaning, such as the implicit or explicit presence of conjunctions, and Hao focuses on the genre of scientific texts. Therefore, this study will select a different genre of literary texts and put forward a relatively comprehensive description of logical meanings in Chinese according to the discourse semantic system of connexion, based on the account of the system of connexion in English in Martin (1992) and Hao (2015).

The data used for analysis are texts in Chapter One of a Chinese novel entitled Hong Lou Meng (henceforth HLM) (《红楼梦》), which has been widely recognised as a masterpiece of Chinese literature and a pinnacle of Chinese fiction. Written in the mid-18th century, HLM mainly shows many common linguistic features with Chinese baihuawen (白话文), less classical than ancient Chinese but more classical than contemporary Mandarin. Thus, the description of texts in HLM can show language characteristics in Chinese baihuawen. It can also help gain some insight into that of contemporary Mandarin, as Ziqing Zhu comments in the preface to Wang (1943) that “even though over 200 years have passed since the coming out of HLM, the grammar is almost the same as modern Mandarin with only a few changes in vocabulary”. For the current study, Chapter One of the 120 chapters in HLM is selected as data, as it presents the origin of this story, and this one chapter provides sufficient data for the analysis.

In the following sections, I will first present a brief overview of the system of connexion in Chinese, and then explain in detail how logical meanings in Chinese can be analysed through the dimensions of explicitness, type, and externality. After this, I will describe a distinct feature found to be relevant to the analysis through the three dimensions: indeterminacy of logical meanings in Chinese.

2. An overview of the system of CONNEXION in Chinese

The system of connexion was initially proposed by J. R. Martin under the name of conjunction; it was renamed connexion by Jing Hao in order to avoid the terminological confusion with the lexicogrammatical dimension of conjunction in cohesion (Hao 2015, 228). This system in the discourse semantics accounts for logical meanings/connexions used by writers/speakers to link figures. Here, a figure is a “going-on” in the discourse semantics; the relationship between these figures is called connexion.

The analysis of the texts in HLM shows that the system of connexion in Chinese can be cross-classified according to dimensions of explicitness, type, and externality, as mapped out in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

System of connexion in Chinese.

Before moving to the detailed description of connexions in Chinese, the approach in which connexions can be identified from texts is particularly noted, since the identification of connexions is the essential step before analysis along the three dimensions. Logical meaning as defined in the discourse semantic system of connexion goes beyond the limit of lexicogrammar: it can be identified either within a clause complex or between clause complexes, both of which are seen as means for developing the logic of discourse, as Martin (1992, 163) comments:

The point is that while examples such as these make use of resources other than the clause complex to mark logical relations between parts of a text, there is a sense in which the alternative realisations are all variations on the same theme – namely that of relating one part of a text to another in terms of the natural logic of time, cause, comparison and addition. So not only does the clause complex need to be supplemented as far as a consideration of logical relations is concerned, but it needs to be abstracted from as well so that a more general treatment can be pursued, taking the clause complex into account as just one of its manifestations. It is for this reason of course that logical relations will be interpreted from the perspective of discourse semantics, rather than that of lexicogrammar here.

For example, in either (1) or (2) below, there is a connexion between the two figures under the discourse semantic system of connexion, although from the perspective of lexicogrammar, the two clauses in (1) are logically combined within a clause complex, while in (2) the two clauses are typically analysed not to be logically connected but rather cohesively related beyond a clause complex, as indicated by the exclamation mark between them.

In a more complex example (3) below, six connexions are identified between the eight figures according to the discourse semantic system of connexion. The connexions are drawn in Figure 2, in which two straight lines are connected together to signal a connexion between figures. Note that there may be other different ways of identifying connexions in (3) due to the relative indeterminacy of connexion in Chinese. This will be discussed in Section 6 below. Figure 2 just presents one possible interpretation so as to exemplify the analysis approach under the system of connexion.

Figure 2.

Identification of logical meanings in (3).

3. Explicitness of connexion

Now I will describe logical meanings in Chinese through three dimensions of explicitness, type, and externality. This section focuses on the dimension of explicitness. A connexion is an explicit one if it is overtly marked by a conjunctive element; if figures are logically related without any conjunctive elements, it is an implicit connexion. Conjunctive elements are not only conjunctions (e.g., 且 qie “and”), but also continuatives (e.g., 又 you “also”), conjunctive settings (e.g., 俄而 e’er “soon after”), or conjunctive occurrences (e.g., 使 shi “make”). Although aspect in Chinese, such as 了le that indicates an occurrence has been completed, can also make a clue for a connexion, I analysed them as covert markers in implicit connexions.

The uniqueness of this dimension in Chinese is that unlike English and some other languages, it is common to connect Chinese figures in an implicit way without any conjunctive elements. For instance, in (4) below, there is an implicit connexion, where the two figures are connected without overt conjunctive elements.

As for the explicit conjunctive markers in Chinese, some conjunctive elements are used singly, such as且qie “and”, 便 bian “then/so” and 以致 yizhi “so that”; while others are used together as correlative conjunctions, such as 第一件 … 第二件 diyijian … dierjian “in the first place … in the second place”, 虽 … 但 sui … dan “although … but” and 因 … 便 yin … bian “because … so”. In (5) below, the two conjunctive elements因 yin “because” and 便 bian “so” together mark the causal connexion between the two figures.

Although correlative conjunctions typically occur together, one or other may optionally be omitted. In (6) below, only 因 yin “because” appears, without the expected other correlative conjunction便bian “so”, as in the complete pair因 … 便 yin … bian “because … so”. Such cases almost do not affect the analysis of connexion in Chinese texts, because the implicit half can be easily recovered within its context in most of the data used in this study.

4. Types of connexion

Now let us move to the second dimension of type. The system of connexion includes four general types of connexion, namely addition, comparison, time, and consequence, each of which can be further divided into delicate choices. These types of connexion in Chinese are mapped out in Figure 3.

Figure 3.

Types of connexion.

5. Externality of connexion

According to the dimension of externality, a connexion is an internal one if it is rhetorical, concerned with the organisation of the argument within the text itself, while it is an external connexion if it connects experiential activities outside the text. For instance, in (19) below, the writer organises two arguments, i.e., two features of the book, within the text itself. On the one hand, there is no record of朝代年纪 chaodai nianji “dynasty and year” and, on the other hand, there is no record of 善政shanzheng “good performance”. These are rhetorical arguments based on the writer’s organisation, and hence the connexion is internal.

In contrast, in (20), the figures are logically related in the outside world: the 故事gushi “story” 有 you “have” 趣味 quwei “interest”, and this is why I 编写 bianxie “compile” it here. Thus, this counts as an external connexion.

6. Indeterminacy of connexion

So far I have introduced the system of connexion in Chinese based on the three dimensions of explicitness, type, and externality. When I accounted for connexions through these dimensions, I found the analysis of connexions in Chinese is more indeterminate than that in English and some other languages. I will explain this distinct feature in this section.

The “indeterminacy” means that a number of interpretations are possible for a given connection. This feature of indeterminacy was mostly observed in terms of the type of connexion and/or the scope of connexion. The notion of the scope of connexion as defined in this study refers to the identification of which figure(s) are connected with which other figure(s), while the type of connexion refers to the different types outlined in Section 4. In this study, a connexion with a single interpretation of the scope and the type of connexion is regarded as a determinate connexion, while one with several different interpretations in either or both of these aspects is regarded as an indeterminate connexion. The following will illustrate the indeterminacy of connexion in Chinese from the two aspects.

6.2. Indeterminacy of the scope of connexion

Also, the scope of connexion in Chinese is sometimes indeterminate with several possible interpretations. A particular figure can be interpreted as connected with one or more figures before it, and it is also possible to interpret it as connected with one or more figures after it. This kind of indeterminacy occurs in instances where figures are logically connected in an implicit way and/or when a number of commas are included to delimit figures before a full stop. The use of punctuation in Chinese is different from that in English and some other languages: full stops are less used and commas are more used, as some writers would like to combine a number of figures together within a full stop (e.g., Wang 1943).

In (24) below, five commas are used as boundaries between figures before a full stop, and there are only two conjunctive elements: 因 … 则 yin … ze “because … then” and 并 bing “and”. The scope of connexions between the first four figures is indeterminate, with two possible interpretations, as shown in Figure 4 In the first interpretation, these four figures are connected one by one by addition, as listing four activities曹雪芹caoxueqin “Xueqin Cao” has undertaken for the revision of the novel in his 悼红轩daohongxuan “Mourn-Red Studio”. In the second interpretation, the first figure is connected together with the following three figures by a relationship of comparative similarity, because these three figures further specify what activities took place during the 十载shizai “ten years” in the first figure.

Table 24.

Example (24)

因	曹雪芹	于	悼红轩	中， 披阅	十载，
yin	caoxueqin	yu	dao hong xuan	zhong piyue	shi zai
because	Cao Xueqin	at	Mourn Red Studio	inside read over	ten year
‘Because Cao Xueqin read over (the book) for ten years in his Mourn-Red Studio,’
增	删	五次，
zeng	shan	wu ci
add	delete	five time
‘(he) added and deleted (the content of the book) for five times,’
纂成	目录，
zuan cheng	mulu
compile become	contents
‘(he) compiled the contents,’
分出	章回，
fen chu	zhanghui
divide produce	chapter
‘(he) divided (the book) into chapters,’
则	题曰	《金陵十二钗》，
ze	ti yue	jinlingshierchai
then	title say	Jinling Twelve Beauties
‘then (he) named it Twelve Beauties of Jinling,’
并	题	一绝。
bing	ti	yi jue
and	write	one verse
‘and (he) wrote a verse.’

Figure 4.

Possible interpretations 1 and 2 of the scope of connexion in (24).

The above has presented several examples of indeterminacy of connexion in terms of the identification of the type and/or scope. However, it should be noted that indeterminacy of connexion is not a common phenomenon is Chinese, although more common than in English and some other languages. In the Chinese texts selected as data, the majority of the connexions are determinate ones in spite of the common implicitness of connexion and the frequent use of commas in Chinese. This is because the interpretation of a certain connexion is on the basis of its specific context, which often limits the interpretation of connexion to only one choice.

For instance, in either of two possible interpretations of (24) shown above, the second figure, the third figure and the fourth figure have been interpreted as logically connected one by one by addition, although they are part of a series of figures connected almost implicitly and simply delimited by commas. This can be explained from the context: the three figures are added one by one to list three activities Xueqin Cao has undertaken in the revision of the novel, and so they are analysed as connected by addition rather than any other type of connexion.

To sum up, while indeterminacy of connexion is a more distinctive feature of Chinese, its impact on the understanding of connexion in Chinese is limited due to the disambiguation by the context in which the connexion is embedded. Hence, it is not seen as a serious obstacle for the analysis of logical meanings in Chinese.

7. Conclusion

This study has put forward an alternative approach from the perspective of discourse semantics for analysing logical meanings in Chinese. To be specific, it has taken an initial step in providing a relatively comprehensive account of logical meanings in Chinese according to the discourse semantic system of connexion. I have used texts from Chapter One of HLM as the data, and described logical meanings in Chinese through the dimensions of explicitness, type, and externality under the system of connexion (see from Section 2 to Section 5 above). Also, I have presented a detailed introduction to a distinct feature of indeterminacy in terms of logical meanings in Chinese (see Section 6 above).

As a demonstration of this linguistic approach, I have adopted it to analyse source texts and target texts in the investigation of translation choices for logical meanings from Chinese into English (see more in Li 2019). It is hoped that other researchers who conduct discourse analysis in their studies can be more aware of this approach so that they are equipped with useful linguistic tools in the discourse semantics when analysing logical meanings in Chinese.