The semantics and pragmatics of the CHI + NON-FOOD NP construction: Comments on Xiong (2012

DOI 10.1515/ip-2014-0012 Intercultural Pragmatics 2014; 11(2): 279 – 300

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Yanzhi Li and Yicheng Wu*The semantics and pragmatics of the CHI + NON-FOOD NP construction: Comments on Xiong (2012)

Abstract: Xiong (2012) presents a pragmatic as well as a semantic account of the CHI + NON-FOOD NP expression in Chinese, an apparently unconventional yet highly productive construction formed by a most frequently used verb CHI ‘eat.’ In this paper we take issue with various points of Xiong’s analysis, demonstrating that contrary to a number of his claims, (1) the non-canonical construction is not unique to Chinese, but quite common to Southeast Asian languages such as Viet-namese and Thai; (2) it is indeed the case that the more frequently a verb is used, the more likely its meanings are varied; (3) the verb CHI ‘eat’ is not originally from (kou-) chi ‘stammer or stutter’ in Old Chinese, i.e., the former does not evolve from the latter, for they are merely homonymous; (4) it does not make much sense to stress the difference in meaning between CHI + SHITANG ‘eat dining hall’ and CHI SHITANG DE FAN ‘eat food in the dining hall,’ as the two constructions do share the basic meaning of ‘have meals in the dining hall,’ as evidenced by the corpus data; (5) the formation of CHI SHITANG should be motivated by the prin-ciple of economy and the rule of analogy, rather than otherwise.

Keywords: eat, construction, pragmatics, sense, extension

*Corresponding author: Yicheng Wu: Center for the Study of Language and Cognition, Zhejiang University, China. E-mail: [email protected] Li: Center for the Study of Language and Cognition, Zhejiang University, China. E-mail: [email protected]

1 IntroductionIn Chinese, there exist a wide range of interesting verb-object expressions with the configuration of CHI + NON-FOOD NP, such as CHI SHITANG (‘eat dining-hall’), CHI DAWAN (‘eat big bowl’), CHI FUMU (‘eat parents’), CHI JIUJIJIN (‘eat relief fund’), CHI FANGZU (‘eat rental’). Unlike ZHONGCAN ‘Chinese food’ in the expression CHI ZHONGCAN (‘eat Chinese food’), the NPs following the verb CHI

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280 Yanzhi Li and Yicheng Wu

in the above-mentioned expressions are not typically patient arguments, yet the construction is highly productive and hugely popular in daily conversation. Based on our search in the corpus of CCL (Center for Chinese Linguistics, Peking Univer-sity), the largest corpus of its kind, there are 2,459 such non-canonical samples out of the 10,000 samples, taking a percentage of 24.59%. An interesting question that naturally arises is, why is such a construction fully acceptable in the Chinese language, unconventional though it is? From the perspective of cultural prag-matics, Xiong (2012) presents a novel account of the construction in question, with a particular focus on a well-discussed expression CHI SHITANG (‘eat dining-hall’). As Xiong points out, such a construction reflects the importance of agriculture in China and the prevalence of Chinese eating culture – correctly we think, considering the intertwining of language, culture, and communication.

However, there are various points of Xiong (2012) with which we do not agree. Some of his analyses are apparently not on the right track, as will be shown shortly. In what follows we will demonstrate from both the semantic and prag-matic perspectives that, contrary to Xiong’s various claims, (1) the construction of CHI + NON-FOOD NP is not Chinese-particular at all; rather, it is widely popular in Southeast Asian languages such as Vietnamese and Thai; so it is rather subjec-tive to ascribe the emergence of the linguistic phenomenon only to the (Chinese) cultural factors; (2) the verb CHI has multifarious meanings, but this does not mean that its semantics always varies when it collocates with different NPs; (3) the diverse meanings of CHI are the results of various types of extensions, but not the results of a unidirectional chain-type extension; (4) the meaning of CHI SHI-TANG (‘eat dining-hall’) pertains to a superordinate semantic category, whereas CHI SHITANG DE FAN (‘eat food in the dining hall’), and ZAI SHI TANG CHIFAN (‘have meals in the dining hall’) are all subordinate semantic categories, viz., they are all related structures at different semantic levels; (5) the principle of economy and the rule of analogy are what motivates language change, that is, they moti-vates the emergence of the non-canonical yet economical construction of CHI + NON-FOOD NP emerges out of the canonical construction of CHI + FOOD NP.

2 Problems with Xiong’s analysis

2.1 EAT + NON-FOOD expressions are not unique to Chinese

Xiong points out in various places of his paper that unconventional expressions such as CHI SHITANG are “unique in Chinese” (226, 227, 228, 229, 235, 242), or “found only in Chinese” (231). To our knowledge, unconventional phenomena as such also occur in some Southeast Asian languages such as Vietnamese and Thai.



The semantics and pragmatics of CHI + NON-FOOD NP 281

Interestingly, similar expressions in these languages appear to be more flexible and paratactic than those in Chinese. Consider the Vietnamese expressions formed by ăn ‘eat’1:

(1) ăn sang (‘eat morning’), have breakfast ăn trưa (‘eat noon’), have lunch ăn chiều (‘eat evening’), have supper ăn đêm (‘eat night’), have night snacks

Just as in China, feasts in Vietnam are held as well on death anniversaries. The expression ăn giỗ (‘eat death anniversary’) denotes a situation in which some people are invited to attend such kind of feast, as illustrated by (2).

(2) Hôm nay ông ấy được mời đi ăn giỗ. today (elder one) he PASSIVE-invite go eat death anniversary ‘Today he has been invited to a death anniversary.’

Likewise, ăn tiệc (‘eat feast’) and ăn cưới (‘eat wedding’) are used to mean going to a feast or attending a wedding at invitation, respectively, as shown in (3) and (4).

(3) Ngày mai tôi phải đi ăn tiệc. tomorrow I must go eat feast ‘Tomorrow I shall go to a feast.’

(4) Tối nay tôi phải đi ăn cưới 1 người bạn. tonight I must go eat wedding a friend ‘Tonight I shall attend a friend’s wedding.’

Moreover, to celebrate one’s birthday or to go to someone else’s birthday party can even be expressed as ăn sinh nhật (‘eat birthday’), an expression which does not have a counterpart in the Chinese language, as shown by the Chinese translations of (5) and (6).

(5) Tôi đi ăn sinh nhật 1 người bạn. I go eat birthday a friend ‘I went to a friend’s birthday party.’

1 The Vietnamese and Thai examples are provided respectively by Duong Thi Trinh, a lecturer from Ho Chi Minh City of Vietnam, and Siriwan Sanyakul, a lecturer from Bangkok university of Thailand.




(6) Năm nay tôi không ăn sinh nhật. this year I not eat birthday ‘I won’t celebrate my birthday this year.’

Although the Spring Festival, like Christmas in the West, is the most import-ant occasion in China, there does not exist an expression like CHI CHUNJIE (‘eat spring festival’) in the Chinese language. However, Vietnamese people can go as far as to say, ăn tết (‘eat the spring festival’), which is usually used to mean the celebration of a new year’s arrival.

(7) Năm nay bạn ăn tết ở đâu? this year you eat spring festival where ‘Where will you spend the spring festival this year?’

In addition, there are some other popular expressions in Vietnamese, such as ăn quỵt (‘eat debt’), which means repudiating debts, and ăn trên đầu/trên cổ (‘eat on head/on neck’), which is employed to convey the meaning of seating oneself on other people’s backs and heads, i.e., profiting at the expense of others.

(8) Nó là thằng ăn quỵt, đừng cho nó mượn he is someone apt to repudiate debts don’t give her lend tiền nữa. money ‘He is apt to repudiate debts, so stop lending him money.’

(9) Không được ăn trên đầu/ trên cổ ngừơi khác. cannot eat on head/ neck other people ‘We should not seat ourselves on other people’s backs and heads or profit at

the expense of others.’

Similar EAT expressions are found in Thai language as well, as shown by the examples below.

(10) gin rong- r-han eat dining-hall ‘eat in the dining-hall’ (usually used in a colloquial setting, e.g., when one is asked where he or

she will eat)

(11) gin bom nan eat old-age pension ‘live on the old-age pension’




(12) gin poor/ mia eat husband/wife ‘(a wife/husband) always causes bad sign for her/his husband/wife’

(13) gin way-lah eat time ‘cost time’

The cross-linguistic data presented above makes it evident that, though the extensive use of nonconventional expressions formed by EAT in different lan-guages may be related to respective cultures, the productive construction in the form of EAT + NON-FOOD NP is not particular to the Chinese language, possibly because the eating culture is not particular to China.2 This hard fact strongly sug-gests that a culture-oriented account cannot solely account for the motivation behind the formation of such kind of expressions.

2.2 The problem with the polysemy of CHI ‘eat’

There are also some problems with Xiong’s discussion on the polysemy of the verb CHI. Throughout his paper, Xiong has emphasized for a dozen of times that the Chinese verb can combine with any NP (229, 237, 238, 239, etc.), and these expressions can be reasonably interpreted in some proper context. According to Xiong, the variety of constructions formed by CHI, is due to this verb’s polysemous property. We find that such kind of discussion lack sound foundations.

Xiong repeatedly stresses the polysemy of the verb CHI ‘eat,’ but how polyse-mous on earth is it? Logically, if CHI can co-occur with any NP, and if “the focus of attention should not be placed on the change of semantic roles played by the NPs, but should be placed on the semantically chameleon-like nature of the verb CHI, as claimed by Xiong (231), it would mean that the semantics of CHI varies according to the following NPs, then, CHI should in theory have countless senses, since it can be followed by innumerable NPs. Apparently, this conclusion does not hold water.

2 Admittedly, the eating culture in these Southeast Asian languages bears a close relationship to that in China. However, language contact is only one of the reasons, which cannot adequately explain why they have so many expressions that do not exist in Chinese, e.g., “CHI LAOPO” (‘(a wife/husband) always causes bad sign for her/his husband/wife’). Jiang (1989) points out that the sense of suffer, stand evolved from the original meaning of CHI.




A piece of most direct counter-evidence comes from The dictionary of modern Chinese (the sixth edition), the most authoritative dictionary of its kind. The dic-tionary only gives seven lexical entries of CHI, whose core meaning as well as original meaning is “to put eatable things into mouth and swallow.” The six others are extended ones, including “to live upon something,” “to absorb (esp. liquid),” “to annihilate (more often used in contexts of military affairs or chess games),” “to stand or endure,” “to suffer from unhappy things,” and “to cost or consume.” In one word, Xiong’s claim about the polysemy of CHI turns out to be negligence of the generalizability of the core sense reflected by CHI’s seven senses listed in the sixth edition of The dictionary of modern Chinese.

Through a comparison of the semantic features of CHI in Chinese and its counterpart ‘eat’ in English, the first section of Xiong’s paper makes it clear that “to eat where eatable things are sold or provided” is among the senses that are purported to be unique in Chinese. In our view, however, this is the result of imposing the meaning of the whole construction CHI + Locative NP on the single verb CHI, as evidenced by the fact that this sense given by Xiong is not included in The dictionary of modern Chinese.

From the perspective of Construction Grammar (see Goldberg 1995, 2006), a construction should be able to denote a kind of meaning that is not simply com-posed of the meanings of its constituents. More precisely, a construction seman-tically surpasses or equals the composition of its constituents. Mathematically, if A, B, and C each represents a constituent of a construction and their correspond-ing meaning, and S is the meaning of the whole construction, then there comes out the formula: S ≥ A + B + C. That is to say, when S = A + B + C, the construction is predictable in that the construction’s meaning equals the sum total of its con-stituents’; when S > A + B + C, the construction’s meaning cannot be predicted completely for it exceeds the sum total of the constituents’ meaning. Let us illus-trate this point with the Chinese verb CHI.

To grasp the sense expressed by the conventional expression CHI PINGGUO (‘eat an apple’), one just needs to add up the respective meanings of the verb CHI and the following noun APPLE without much processing effort. This can be accounted by the principle of compositionality (see, Freg 1892). However, to understand the entire construction of CHI SHITANG, one must take into account the pragmatic relevance among those constituents, rather than simply putting together the meanings of CHI (‘eat’) and SHITANG (‘dining hall’). Therefore, “to eat where eatable things are sold or provided,” which is wrongly claimed by Xiong to be the sense of the verb CHI, should be justifiably considered to be the constructional sense of CHI SHITANG (‘eat dining hall’).

Finally, the author (231) opposes the view that “verbs of high frequency correlate with their instability” (see Wang 2009; Wang 2011; Liu 2011 inter alia),




for the reason that many verbs in Chinese, albeit frequently used in different situ-ations, semantically remain relatively stable. Then, what immediately follows his own opposing argument is his statement that “the verbal meaning does change with the following NPs.” Apparently, Xiong’s discussion is self-contradictory in this respect. The frequency of using a word correlates with its senses. The more frequently a word is used, the more senses it will be likely to develop, and the shorter it will become in form, or vice versa. But this sort of semantic instability does not allow us to go as far as to claim that a word can have countless senses. The senses of a word have the features of generalizability and distinguishability, and the generalizability is an embodiment of semantic stability, which is often reflected in lexicography.

In general, among a word’s various senses, there is a core sense which is fre-quently used, and the others are just extensions of this core sense. These senses more or less bear some relationships to each other. Therefore, we need distin-guish and classify word senses based on authentic linguistic data.

2.3 The historical semantics of CHI

According to Xiong, the literal meaning of CHI in ancient times is ‘to stammer’ or ‘to stutter,’ which gradually evolved into the meaning of “to put eatable things into mouth.” In fact, this is not true at all.

Admittedly, in Shuo Wen Jie Zi (a classical Chinese dictionary of words), the verb CHI, whose written character is “吃,” is indeed construed as having difficulty in speaking smoothly or speaking with some stutter in. According to Xin Fu of Shuo Wen (a supplement of Shuo Wen Jie Zi), CHI, represented by “喫,” equals SHI (食, ‘eat’). However, when they are originally used, CHI (represented by “吃”) and SHI (represented by “食”) are two totally different characters; i.e., they are not semantically related, but homonymous. Before the Ming and Qing Dynasties, CHI in most cases was only used to convey the meaning of ‘stammer’ or ‘stutter,’ e.g. “chi chi bu jue” (吃吃不绝: keep stuttering) in Fei Yan Wai Zhuai, except when it was borrowed to express other meanings at times. After the Ming and Qing Dynas-ties, the character CHI (吃) was so widely used in place of CHI (喫), as a result of which the two homophones gradually merged into one character, as discussed in Wang (2011).

2.4 The semantic chains of CHI’s extensions

Xiong cites Dong (1995)’s semantic chains of CHI’s extensions, in an attempt to prove that (i) the Chinese verb’s senses are much more complicated than its




English counterpart, and (ii) that the senses of CHI listed in The dictionary of modern Chinese are only the most representative among its many other senses. We find that there are also problems with the semantic chain depicted by Xiong, not to mention the number of senses.

A reasonable semantic chain should have clear directions of extension, and the senses involved are closely related to neighboring ones, namely, those preced-ing and following the basic sense. This applies to both of the two typical manners in which word meaning is extended, viz., chain-type extension and radiation-type extension (see Wang 1998).

The chain-type extension is one buckled ring by ring. For example, a part of the senses of YAO (‘want’) are extended in this way:

waist (the middle part of a person’s body) → middle (the middle part of something) → intercept (to compel someone to stop progressing midway) → threaten (A force B to change mind so as to fulfill A’s desire) → to obtain through begging (A beg B to satisfy A’s desire) → want (to expect a fulfillment of desire)

Evolving along this line of extension, different senses of a word come one after another in close succession. Hence, all the senses in a chain share a com-mon sememe with adjacent senses inserted in the relational semantic chain. But there should be no such common sememe among the senses that are far away from each other.

The radiation-type extension starts from a word’s original meaning, moves toward various directions with several different meanings yielded along the way. That is to say, the extended meanings each are developed from the original mean-ing from different perspectives, and for this reason, they share some common sememes with the original meaning. Consider JIE (节, ‘joint’) for example, whose original meaning is ‘joint of bamboo.’ In the earlier literature, Zuo Si in Ode to the Capital of Kingdom Wu wrote that the joints of Bamboo shoot out like winter bamboo shoots (竹则笋苞抽节, zhu ze sun bao chou JIE). Gradually, it has several extended meanings, as shown by the examples below, each of which contains a ‘novel’ sense extended directly from the original sense.

A. knag (used for plants)(14) 不遇槃根错节，何以别 Buyu pangen cuoJIE heyi bie no meet coiled tree roots crossed branches how distinguish s 利器乎！ liqi hu harp tool Particle




‘Without trying on coiled tree roots and crossed branches, how could a sharp tool be distinguished from others?’

(From The Life Story of Yu Xu)

B. joint (used for animals)(15) 彼节者有间, 而刀刃者无厚 Bi JIE zhe you jian, er daorenzhe wu hou the joint of cattle have gap but blade no thickness ‘There is gap at the joints of cattle, but the blade does not have thickness.’ (From On Regimen in Chuangtse)

C. solar term (used for time and date)(16) 四时八位十二度二十四节 Sishi bawei shierdu ershisi JIE four seasons, eight trigrams, duodenary series, twenty-four solar terms (From The Preface to the Historical Records by Si Maqian)

D. rhythm (used in music)(17) 长歌赴促节 Changge fu cu JIE long song echo short rhythm ‘The long song synchronizes with the short rhythm.’ (From An Imitation of Pre-Tang Poetry by Lu Ji)

E. moral integrity (used in ethics)(18) 时穷节乃 Shi qiong JIE nai times suffering from hardship and disasters moral integrity at once 见 xian emerge ‘During hardship and disasters moral integrity of people emerged at once.’ (From Song of Righteousness by Wen Tianxiang)

F. law (used on society)(19) 礼不愈节 Li bu yu JIE modesty and politeness not cross law ‘Retain modesty and politeness; never cross the legal lines’ (From Qu Li of The Book of Rites)




G. economize (used on behavior)(20) 节用而爱人 JIE yong er ai ren cut down on expenses and love officials ‘Cut down on expenses and love officials.’ (From Xue’Er of The Analects of Confucius)

The semantic extension process of JIE can be characterized as in Figure 1.

As a matter of fact, the two types of extension almost always work together. For instance, the word XIN in Chinese (‘信’: faithfulness in speech) has a seman-tic extension process as shown below.

The development from the original sense to the senses 1, 2, 3, and 4 follows the radiation type of extension, whereas the development from the original sense to senses 4, 5, 6, and 7 reflects the chain type of extension. The meanings of words in modern Chinese mostly rely on a comprehensive manner of extension, i.e., a combination of the two manners. Actually, the meanings of YAO and JIE, if

Fig. 1

Fig. 2




displayed altogether, should also abide by a comprehensive manner of extension (See Jiang and Cao 2005).

However, according to the figure (226–227) given in Xiong’s paper, which is intended to display CHI’s semantic extension, the evolutionary route turns out to be a purely relational chain. Precisely, many senses of CHI in Xiong’s figure do not bear any necessary relation to the adjacent ones, namely those preceding and following ones. There are not even common sememes between adjacent mean-ings, e.g., between “to eat where eatable things are sold and provided” (CHI SHI-TANG, ‘eat in the dining-hall’) and “to annihilate or kill” (CHIDIAO DIREN, ‘eat the enemy’), among “to absorb liquid” (CHI MO, ‘eat ink’) and “to consume” (CHI LI/JIN, ‘eat energy/strength’) and “be in a certain state of life or depend upon something” (CHI FUMU, ‘eat parents’), between “get used to accepting certain treatment” (CHI KU, ‘eat hardships’) and “suffer from unhappy things” (CHI KUI, ‘eat losses’), and so on.

Based on the above discussion, we find that there does not seem to be any justification for the semantic chain of CHI presented in Xiong’s paper, since it appears to be just a supposition. Actually, the several senses of CHI given by Xiong are most likely to follow a comprehensive manner of extension, as shown below.

This type of extension can be further illustrated by (21)–(29), where a follow-ing one exemplifies the use of a sense extended from the one right above it.

(21) a. 临歧意颇切, 对酒不能喫。 Lin qi yi po qie, dui jiu bu neng chi Upon departure emotion more deep, against wine not can eat

Fig. 3




‘Upon his departure, we were so sad about his parting from us that we couldn’t even drink the wine.’ (A Twenty-six Rhymed Poem Recording the Departure of Collator Li by Du Fu, Tang Dynasty)

b. 在饭店里多吃了两盅酒, 就发起疯 Zai fandian li duo chi le liangzhong jiu jiu faqi feng At restaurant more eat ASP two-CL wine then go mad 来。 lai Particle ‘(He) drank two more glasses of wine in the restaurant and then had a

drunken fit.’ (From Chapter VII of The Travels of Lao Can by Liu E, Qing Dynasty)

(22) a.圣祖不饮酒, 尤恶喫烟。 Shengzu bu yinjiu you wu chi yan Shengzu not drink, especially hate eat smoke ‘Shengzu emperor (Xuan Ye) did not drink; he hated smoking in

particular.’ (From the 15th Volume of A miscellany of Yan Xia Xiang by Chen Kangqi,

Qing Dynasty)

b. 吃烟, 你不要你的命了！ chi yan ni bu yao nide ming le eat cigarette you no want your life ASP ‘Smoking? Don’t you want your life?’ (From Coalpit in the Anthology of Silence by Ba Jin)

(23)萧队长问: “他们还吃租子吗？” Xiao duizhang wen tamen hai chi zuzi MA Xiao Captain ask they still eat rental Question Mark ‘Captain Xiao asked, “do they still live on the rental?” ’ (From Volume II of Tempest of Zhou Libo)

(24) 我出两千五百块钱, 你从中吃多少, 我 Wo chu liangqianwubai kuai money ni cong zhong chi duoshao wo I’ll offer 2500 rmb you from among eat how much I 不管。 bu guan not care




‘I will offer 2,500 yuan, and I don’t mind how much you will take from it.’ (From Four Generations under One Roof by Lao She)

(25)老夫人才说张生病沉重, 昨夜吃我那 Lao furen cai shuo Zhang Sheng bing yanzhong, zuoye chi wo na old lady just say Zhang Sheng ill serious last night eat I that 一场气, 越重了。 yichang qi, yue zhong LE one CL anger more serious LE ‘The old lady just said that Zhang Sheng got seriously ill. It must be more

serious after bearing my anger last night.’ (From Scene Four of Chapter III of Romance of the Western Chamber by

Wang Shifu, Yuan Dynasty)

(26) 我吃了个猛劲, 又来了个鹞子翻身, 便 Wo chi le ge mengjin you lai le ge yaozi fanshen bian I eat ASP CL spurt again get ASP CL sparrow hawk turn then 蹿出了垣墙。 cuan chu LE yuan qiang jump out ASP low wall ‘I put on a spurt, made a sparrow hawk flip and quickly jumped out of the

low wall.’ (From Chapter Ten of The Story of Broadsword by Guo Chengqing)

(27) 我们怎么好 “稳吃三注” 呢？ Women zenme hao “wen chi san zhu” NE We how good “steady eat 3 CL” Question Mark ‘How could we win three bets securely?’ (From Chapter 56 of A Dream in Red Mansions by Cao Xueqin, Qing

dynasty)

(28) 王安道: “或是红的吃了黑的将军, 黑的就 Wang An dao huo shi hong DE chi le hei DE jiangjun hei DE jiu Wang An said or is read DE eat ASP black DE general black DE then 输; 黑的吃了红的将军, 黑的算赢。” shu hei DE chi LE hong DE jiangjun hei DE suan ying lose black DE eat ASP red DE general hei DE to be win ‘Wang An said, “if the red general kills the black one, the black one will

then be defeated; if the black kills the red, then the black will win.” ’ (From Chapter III of The Life of Yue Fei)




(29) 美国人攻不动我们的阵地, 相反, 他们 Meiguoren gong bu dong women DE zhendi xiangfan tamen American take not down our DE position on the contrary they 总是被我们吃掉。 zongshi bei women chi diao always PASSIVE we eat ‘The Americans couldn’t shake our position. On the contrary, they were

always stricken down by us.’ (From The great victory of the war to resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea

and tasks henceforth by Mao Zedong)

As mentioned previously, the verb CHI is a highly frequently used word in Chi-nese, taking the 184th position in The draft on the list of commonly-used words in modern Chinese. When it is combined with some noun phrase denoting location, a construction will be formed, which can express the meaning of “to eat where edible things are sold or provided,” such as CHI GUANZI (吃馆子, ‘eat in restau-rants’) and CHI SHITANG (吃食堂, ‘eat in dining-hall’). However, it is important to note that the verb CHI in such a construction retains its original meaning. Mean-while, apart from the sense of “to eat where eatable things are sold or provided,” this construction as a whole can also convey other constructional information, such as “a collective way of life,” that “no fire is set to cook at home,” and that “the quality of food cannot be guaranteed.” But this does not in any sense mean that we can attribute such constructional meanings to the verb CHI.

2.5 CHI SHITANG and CHI SHITANG DE FAN are synonymous

In the third section of his paper, Xiong draws a comparison among CHI SHITANG (吃食堂, ‘eat dining hall’), CHI SHITANG DE FAN (吃食堂的饭, ‘eat the cooked rice of dining hall’), and ZAI SHITANG LI CHI (在食堂里吃, ‘eat in the dining-hall’). He stresses that these three expressions denote totally different meanings and hence are not interchangeable, and compared with the other two, CHI SHITANG is a more abstract and general expression. There is no question about this state-ment. Nevertheless, CHI SHITANG, CHI SHITANG DE FAN, ZAI SHITANG CHIFAN and ZAI SHITANG CHIFAN DE XIGUAN (在食堂吃饭的习惯, ‘the habit of eating in dining-hall’), do not lie at the same semantic level. If we use A, B, C and D to rep-resent the four expressions, respectively, the semantic relationship among them can be depicted in Figure 4.

Figure 4 should be interpreted in the way that A’s semantic content encompass-es those of B, C, and D, or the latter three are just part or sub-content of the former’s




content. Only by combining these four sub-contents can we interpret A in a proper way. Actually, Xiong’s finding that the four expressions have unequal semantic con-tents is also the result of comparing semantic contents of different levels. In addition, different constructions are supposed to be used in different pragmatic situations. For instance, the answer to a question like, “What will you eat in the dining-hall,” should be, “The meal provided by the dining-hall.” This is the most underlying as well as most basic semantics of CHI SHITANG, which can be further illustrated by the examples below (all of which are taken from CCL, Peking University).

(30) A: 你一般怎么吃饭? 做饭吗? Ni yiban zenme chifan? Zuofan ma? you usually how eat cook meals Question Mark ‘How do you usually eat? Do you cook yourself?’

B: 不,吃̣食̣堂̣。 Bu, CHI SHITANG. no eat dining hall ‘No, I eat in the dinning-hall.’ →What gets stressed here is eating habit, namely one of the ways of life.

(31) 吃̣食̣堂̣ 比在外面便宜。 CHI SHITANG bi zai waimian painyi eat dining hall than in outside cheap ‘Eating in the dining-hall is cheaper than in the restaurant.’ →The speaker intends to place an emphasis on the location of eating, i.e.,

in the dining hall.

(32) 表面看是自然灾害, 是集体吃̣ 食̣堂̣ 等等, Biaomian kan shi ziran zaihai, shi jiti CHI SHITANG dengdeng, 实际上······ shijishang . . . (Selected from newspapers and periodicals of 1994) Surface see is natural disaster is collectivity eat dining-hall and so on

actually

Fig. 4




Although on the surface it appears to be a matter of natural disaster or eating in the dining-hall collectively, etc., actually . . .

(Selected from newspapers and periodicals of 1994) →The focus here is on the collectivity reflected through eating.

(33) 他说他见我每次回去都不见胖, 担心吃̣ Ta shuo ta jian wo meici huiqu dou bu jian pang, danxin CHI he say he see I every time go back all not look fat worry eat 食̣堂̣ 搞垮了身体······ SHITANG gaokua le shenti . . . dining-hall break down ASP body . . . ‘He said he never found me grow fatter every time I came back. So he was

worried that only eating in dining-hall might break me down . . .’ (Selected from newspapers and periodicals of 1996) →The focus here is on whether food is nutritious or not.

As mentioned above, Xiong repeatedly emphasizes that CHI SHITANG is different in meaning from CHI SHITANG DE FAN. This actually denies the most basic and underlying semantic content of CHI SHITANG, i.e., CHI SHITANG LI DE FAN (吃食堂里的饭, ‘eat food in dining hall’). Furthermore, the CHI + NON-FOOD NP con-struction always carries the semantic content of “eat the meals in . . .”, regardless of what kind of a NP follows the verb, e.g.,

(34) 吃饭基本吃̣食̣堂̣, 吃̣的̣ 是̣ 那̣种̣ 配̣给̣的̣ Chifan jiben chi shitang, chi DE shi nazhong pei gei DE Eat rice basically eat dining-hall, eat DE is that-CL allocate GEI DE 发̣了̣霉̣ 的̣ 平̣价̣米̣, 喝水只能喝泥塘里的 fa le mei DE pingjia mi, he shui zhineng he nitang li DE grow ASP mildew DE fair price rice drink water only drink bog in DE shui 水。 water ‘At that time, I mainly ate in the collective’s dining hall. What was eaten

was that kind of allocated, moldy rice of fair price; what could be drunk was only water in bogs.’ (Extracted from Extending the artistic life of Xu Beihong with own entire lifetime on People’s Daily of July 31, 2012)

(35) 她一定要把铅笔盒送给香雪, 还说她住在 Ta yiding yao ba qianbihe songgei Xiangxue hai shuo ta zhu zai She must want BA pencil box give Xiangxue still say she live in




学校吃̣食̣堂̣, 鸡̣蛋̣ 带̣回̣去̣ 也没̣ 法̣ 吃̣。 xuexiao chi shitang jidan daihuiqu ye mei fa chi school eat dining-hall egg bring back also no method eat ‘She insisted on giving the pencil box to Xiangxue, and said she wasn’t able

to cook the eggs even if she carried them back, for she lived in school and ate in the dining-hall.’ (From Oh, Xiangxue by Tie Ning)

(36) 一想起他的儿子小宝吃̣食̣堂̣ 饭̣菜̣ 吃得 Yi xiangqi ta de erzi xiaobao chi shitang fancai chi DE Once remember his son Xiaobao eat dining-hall rice and dish chi DE 眼泪汪汪难以下咽的样子, 他······ yanlei wangwang nanyi xiayan DE Yangzi, ta . . . yanlei wangwang nanyi xiayan DE Yangzi, ta . . . ‘At the thought of the scene that his son Xiao Bao, eyes drowned in tears,

could hardly swallow down the food of the dining-hall, he suffered a lot for it . . .’ (From Destiny by Fang Fang)

(37) 我问她: “你在家里不和̣ 爸̣爸̣ 妈̣妈̣一̣起̣ 吃̣饭̣ Wo wen ta ni zai jia li bu he baba mama yi qi chifan I ask her, you at home not with dad and mom together eat 吗?” 她摇摇头说: “不,我一个人吃̣ 食̣堂̣···̣···̣。” MA ta yaoyao tou shuo bu wo yigeren chi shitang Question Mark she shake head say no I Alone eat dining-hall ‘I asked her, “didn’t you eat together with your father and mother when at

home?” She shook her head, “No, I ate in the dining-hall by myself.” ’ (From Part II of Jiang Qing in My Eyes by Shui Jing)

(38)农民不种地, 去砸锅炼铁; 女人不做饭, 去 Nonmin bu zhongdi qu zaguo liantie nüren bu zuofan qu Famers no farm go smash pot scrap iron woman not cook rice go 吃̣ 食̣堂̣。 chi shitang eat dining-hall ‘Farmers stopped farming to smash their iron pots and pans into pieces

and sell them as scrapped iron; Women no longer cooked meals themselves but went to eat in the collective dining-hall.’

(From The Weeping Huai River by Dai Houying)




(39) 蔡德惠偶尔也被人拉到米线铺 Cai Dehui ouer ye bei ren la dao mixian pu Cai Dehui occasionally also PASSIVE someone pull-COMP rice noodle store 里去̣ 吃̣ 一̣碗̣ 焖̣鸡̣ 米̣线̣, 但这样的时候 li qu chi yiwan menji mixian dan zheyang DE shihou into eat a bowl braised chicken rice noodle but in this way DE time 很少。他每天只是吃̣ 食̣堂̣。 henshao ta meitian zhishi chi shitang rare he everyday only eat dining-hall ‘Cai Dehui was at times also pulled into a rice noodle house to eat a bowl of

rice noodle with braised chicken. But this seldom happened. He just ate in the dining-hall every day.’ (From Sundial by Wang Zengqi)

(40) 你们小单身汉, 连个做饭的地儿都没有, Nimen xiao danshenhan lian ge zuofan DE di’er dou meiyou You little bachelor even CL cook rich DE place no 一̣天̣三̣顿̣吃̣食̣堂̣, 太可怜了。 yitian sandun chi shitang tai kelian le one day 3 meals eat dining-hall too poor ASP ‘You, little bachelors, you even don’t have a place to cook in. How poor you

are to eat in the dining-hall all the three meals of a day!’ (From the movie of The Chinese-style divorce)

(41) 各地领导各级干部最需要的就是用行动 Gedi lingdao geji ganbu zui xuyao de jiushi yong xingdong All regions leaders all level cadre most meed DE is use actions 说话, 对奢华接待说 “不”,甚至提倡到 shuohua dui shehua jiedai shuo bu shenzhi tichang dao speak to luxurious reception say no even advocate go 基层吃̣ 盒̣饭̣、吃̣ 食̣堂̣、吃̣ 农̣民̣ 家̣里̣ 的̣ 饭̣。 jiceng chi hefan chi shitang chi nongmin jiali DE fan grass-root eat boxed meal, eat dining-hall, eat farmer home DE fan ‘What matters most for the leading cadres of all regions and at all levels is

to let their actions speak, to say no to luxurious reception and even to advocate going to grass-roots units to eat boxed meals, to eat in the dining-hall, and to eat food in farmers’ home.’ (From Running for dinners and right of speech on People’s Tribune of December 28, 2012)




As can be seen, all the expressions CHI SHITANG in the above-presented exam-ples carry the core sense, “to eat the cooked rice in the dining-hall.” As clearly shown by example (35), in the construction of CHI SHITANG FANCAI (吃食堂饭菜, ‘eat meals provided by the dining-hall’), FANCAI (‘meals’) is the headword, whereas SHITANG serves as the modifier of FANCAI ‘meals.’ As far as example (39) is concerned, CHI SHITANG is modified by YITIAN SANDUN (‘three times a day’), it is therefore undeniable that what is eaten here should be meals served by the dining-hall, or that CHI SHITANG (‘eat in the dining-hall’) is closely related to CHI FAN (‘eat meals’).

2.6 The principle of economy

Xiong denies that the principle of economy is mostly responsible for the forma-tion of unconventional expressions such as CHI SHITANG. He claims (233) that CHI SHITANG is semantically different from any of the other several types of expressions. Although he is correct in construing CHI SHITANG as a more abstract and general expression, he seems wrong in denying that the principle of economy (see Zipf 1949), a universal principle of language use, plays the crucial role in the formation of the expression at issue.

According to Xie and Zuo (2007), the construction in the form of CHI + NON-FOOD NP emerged during late Yuan and early Ming dynasty, where the non-food NPs are mainly instrument object, location object and source object, such as CHI LAIWAN (吃癞碗, ‘eat dirty bowls’) (from chapter 29 of Water margin), CHI SANWAN (吃三碗, ‘eat three bowls’) (from chapter 29 of Water margin) and KAOSHAN CHISHAN, KAOSHUI CHISHUI (靠山吃山，靠水吃水, ‘rely on moun-tains and eat mountains, rely on water and eat water,’ taken from Piao Tong Shi). Thereafter, there are an increasing number of non-patient objects that are able to collocate with the verb CHI.

Driven by the principle of economy as well as the principle of analogy, numerous expressions in modern Chinese appear to ‘copy’ some constructions existing in ancient Chinese, in the sense that they are able to express relatively rich semantic content, though economical in structure, e.g.,

(42) 后来, 来了一个人, 天天请他吃 Houlai lai le yige ren tiantian qing ta chi Afterwards, come ASP one CL person everyday invite him eat guanzi 馆子。 restaurant




‘Afterwards, there came a person, who invited him to eat in the restaurant every day.’ (From Chapter 31 of The strange present situation witnessed by 20 years by Wu Yanren, late Qing Dynasty)

(43) 倒用不着你下帖, 请吃馆子, 用 Dao yong bu zhao ni xiatie qing chi guanzi yong But no need you send invitation invite eat restaurant no 不着。 bu zhao need ‘There is no need for you to send us an invitation, and to take us to the

restaurant. There is no need.’ (From Taking office by Lao She)

The non-canonical construction CHI GUANZI in (42)–(43) might be an earliest structure from which CHI SHITANG evolved. In Chinese we can find another popular expression also in the form of CHI + NON-FOOD NP, that is, KAOSHAN CHISHAN, KAOSHUI CHISHUI (‘rely on mountains and eat mountains, rely on water and eat water’). According to Xie and Zuo (2007), CHI SHAN or CHI SHUI should mean eating the edible things that grow on mountains or in water, rather than anything else. Similarly, the expression CHI FUMU (literally ‘eat parents’) conveys a layer of meaning of eating food bought with parents’ income (i.e., live on parents’ income); CHI LAOBAO (literally ‘eat labor insurance’) has the mean-ing of eating food exchanged by labor insurance; CHI TUIXIUJIN (literally ‘eat old age pension’) also express the meaning of eating food bought with old age pension.

From the perspective of historical semantics, the original and core sense of CHI in these constructions cannot be ignored. Doubtless, it is an economical way to compress various semantic contents into one economical and concise structure.

2.7 Other problems

There are other points of self-contradiction with Xiong’s discussion. First, Xiong repeatedly stresses that the focus of attention of CHI + NP should not be placed on the change of semantic roles played by the NPs following it, but should be on the semantically chameleon-like nature of the verb CHI, so as to reduce the mean-




ing of CHI in CHI SHITANG to “to eat where eatable things are sold or provided.” However, in following sections, particularly in the third section, the author repeatedly states that CHI SHITANG cannot be simply interpreted as “eat in . . . ,” but should be construed as “in the habit of eating in . . .”; furthermore, both the verb CHI and the NP can be taken as “basic lexical categories that lie in the middle part of a related conceptual network” (Xiong 2012). Obviously, Xiong’s discussion is self-contradictory.

Second, the author also states clearly that different answers should be given to different relevant questions. More specifically, when the question is, “How do you usually eat? Do you cook yourself?” the answer can be CHI SHITANG. For this question, the speaker is apparently asking about the way of one’s life, rather than where to eat. This, to a certain extent, helps to falsify Xiong’s own claim that verb CHI in CHI SHITANG means “to eat where eatable things are sold or provided.”

Third, Xiong adds (229), “any NP can follow ‘chi’ disregarding the syntactic constraint between the verb and its object.” In fact, this is not a syntactic con-straint, but instead a semantic constraint, precisely a selectional restriction. In contemporary theoretical linguistics, such a restriction is often employed to dis-cuss conditions under which a verb can possibly co-occur with an object NP. With regard to the Chinese verb CHI, the semantic constraint on its co-occurring object is doubtless that the object NP following the verb should possess the property of being edible.

3 Summary

In this paper we take issue with Xiong (2012)’s analysis of the CHI + NON-FOOD NP construction, pointing out that there are various problems with the cultural pragmatic account he has proposed. Contrary to his various claims, we have pre-sented various sources of evidence that (1) the non-canonical construction is not unique to Chinese, but quite common to Southeast Asian languages such as Viet-namese and Thai; (2) it is indeed the case that the more frequently a verb is used, the more likely its meanings are to be varied; (3) the verb CHI is not originally from (kou-) chi ‘(mouth) stammer or stutter’ in Old Chinese, i.e., the former does not evolve from the latter, for the two words are merely homonymous; (4) it does not make much sense to stress the difference in meaning between CHI + SHITANG ‘eat dining hall’ and CHI SHITANG DE FAN ‘eat food in the dining hall,’ as the two constructions do share the basic meaning of ‘have meals in the dining hall,’ as evidenced by the corpus data we have presented; (5) the formation of CHI SHI-TANG should be motivated by the principle of economy, rather than otherwise.




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BionotesYanzhi Li was a Lecturer of Chinese Linguistics, and is currently a doctoral candi-date at the Center for the Study of Language and Cognition, Zhejiang University, China. Her main research interests are in Construction Grammar, Semantics, Pragmatics and Teaching Chinese as a Second Language. Her publications have appeared in some prestigious Chinese journals such as Journal of Foreign Languages.

Yicheng Wu is Professor of General Linguistics at the Center for the Study of Language and Cognition, Zhejiang University, China. His main research interests are in syntax, semantics, pragmatics and the interface between them. He has numerous publications in a wide array of journals, including PLoS ONE, Physics of Life Reviews, Linguistic Inquiry, Linguistics, Lingua, Journal of Pragmatics, Language Sciences, Journal of Chinese Linguistics and Cognitive Linguistics.



The semantics and pragmatics of the CHI + NON-FOOD NP construction: Comments on Xiong (2012

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