Reciprocity in Chinese Language and Culture

Abstract

Reciprocal constructions, which involve a grammatical pattern where each participant occupies both the role of agent and patient, have a seemingly simple sentence structure but actually denote complex semantic properties. Thus languages have come up with a great diversity of solutions to encode reciprocity within a single clausal structure. Recent typological work has focused this diversity from different aspects, however few work investigated Mandarin reciprocal constructions, which bears an important implicatures on the relationship between language form and function. This study presents a landscape of mandarin reciprocals from a typological approach and investigates how (1) reciprocity is encoded in language system, and (2) Confucius philosophical factors influence reciprocal strategies in Chinese. It is claimed that reciprocity in Chinese is represented in almost all grammatical levels, much richer than that in other languages. Two factors, language inherent nature and Confucius philosophical, function together in the representation of Chinese reciprocal constructions.