Journals Information
Linguistics and Literature Studies Vol. 11(4), pp. 64 - 73
DOI: 10.13189/lls.2023.110402
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An Analysis of the Compound Structure of "Brother/Sister + Noun"
Rui Huang , Cong Zong *
School of Foreign Languages, Soochow University, China
ABSTRACT
Brother/Sister + Noun is one of the common compound structures in Modern Chinese. This study, using Corpus Linguistics research methods to search the BCC corpus, aims to analyze the number and characteristics of nouns attached to "brother" and "sister" at the same time, to build a co-occurrence network. The study also explores the social and cultural reasons for the differences from the perspective of cultural semantics. It was found that Modern Chinese tends to use the compound structure of "Brother + Noun", and the related constructs are more productive than the compound structure of "Sister + Noun". "Brother" is generally collocated with nouns representing Social Groups, Regional Nationalities, Military, Political, etc., while "Sister" is more commonly associated with nouns of natural organisms, tangible items and tools, reflecting cultural expectations and evaluations of the genders. From a cultural semantics perspective, an analysis of the compound structure "Brother/Sister + Noun" reveals distinct disparities between the terms "Brother" and "Sister" when used in conjunction with a noun. These disparities can be categorized into four factors: the first is the influence of the Confucian notion of gender difference, the second pertains to the existence of the patriarchal society, the third is related to the metaphorical meaning of the distinctiveness of women's fertility, and the fourth is the different gender consciousness brought about by the biological differences between males and females. This study is conducive to understanding the cultural characteristics and gender evaluations implied in language, which contributes to the realization of gender equality in language.
KEYWORDS
Brother, Sister, Compound Structure, Cultural Semantics
Cite This Paper in IEEE or APA Citation Styles
(a). IEEE Format:
[1] Rui Huang , Cong Zong , "An Analysis of the Compound Structure of "Brother/Sister + Noun"," Linguistics and Literature Studies, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 64 - 73, 2023. DOI: 10.13189/lls.2023.110402.
(b). APA Format:
Rui Huang , Cong Zong (2023). An Analysis of the Compound Structure of "Brother/Sister + Noun". Linguistics and Literature Studies, 11(4), 64 - 73. DOI: 10.13189/lls.2023.110402.