A Corpus-based Study of Mandarin Soaking Verbs PÀO and JÌN

A multi-level analysis of the polysemous Mandarin near-synonymous pair PAO and JIN is undertaken in this work. We provide a step-by-step account of meanings, which includes analyses of morphemes, argument structures, sense distributions and a later discussion of their possible extensions, as well as a representation of event modules of both verbs. In incorporating the Module-Attribute Representation of Verbal Semantics (MARVS) proposed by Huang and colleagues (2000), it was discovered that PAO has a wider semantic extension than JIN does. Although the event structure of 'soak objects in liquid' was found for both verbs, PAO was found to be a composite event of a dual process-state, with the event-internal attribute 'toward saturation' [−saturation], while JIN was found to be a simplex event with an inchoative state, reflecting the event-internal attribute 'saturated' [+saturation]. In addition, PAO collocates with the goal of 'hot spring' but JIN does not. Focusing on the core sense of 'soak objects in liquid', we also discussed the possible semantic extensions of PAO and JIN and discovered some metaphorical extensions, such as Part-Whole metonymy, CONTAINER metaphors, and a MASS-COUNT image schema.