Cognitive Relativism: Resultative Construction in Chinese *

Abstract

Cognitive linguistics is viewed as a modern approach to linguistic relativity and cognitive relativism. Resultative verb compounds in Chinese are analyzed in terms of Talmy’s conceptual approach and are shown to present a problem for Talmy’s well-known typological dichotomy between “verb-framed” and “satelliteframed” languages. It is also argued that the so-called “resultative complement” in Chinese resultative verb compounds can be treated as the center of predication, even as the main verb. Pending further psycholinguistic evidence, it appears that Chinese speakers attend relatively more to the result of an event, whereas English speakers attend more to the process of an event.

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