Definition of the psychological verb 爱(ài) ‘love’ in Chinese: an approach sub-lexical
Abstract
This paper analyzes the Chinese polysemic expressions that contain the verb 爱(ài) ‘love’, such as 爱儿子 (ài érzǐ) ‘love the son’, 爱眼睛(ài yǎnjīng) ‘take care of eyes’, 爱土豆(ài tǔdòu) ‘like to eat potatoes’, 爱员工(ài yuángōng) ‘appreciate the employees’, 爱豪车(ài háochē) ‘wish to have luxurious car’ or 爱国守法(ài guó shǒu fǎ) ‘respect the country and the laws’. Within the theoretical framework of Generative Lexicon (Pustejovsky, 1995), this research defends that the Chinese psychological verb (ài) ‘love’ has a minimal meaning (‘feel an intense and pleasant emotion’), which can be extended through the mutual coordination within the verb and the information codified in the internal structure of the word it combines. The processes of lexical concordance that legitimize the different meanings of the verb are what are known as generative mechanisms, in terms of the TLG, whose operation we are going to analyze.
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