The Dynamics of Part-Whole Relationships in Spoken Chinese Discourse

This research focuses on the introduction of anchored indefinite pivots in biclausal presentational constructions (e.g., Qián xiē rìzi yǒu yí-ge kǎoshàng xuéxiào. ‘A few days ago there was one [of us] who got admitted to a school.’). Building upon semi-spontaneous spoken Chinese corpus data, the study examines linguistic strategies for anchoring indefinite pivots, their distributional frequency, and correlations with the predicate types (individual-level vs. stage-level), focusing on the functional motivations underpinning these connections. In particular, it is argued that the prevalent pairing of individual-level predicates with anchored pivots arises from the necessity to create meaningful propositions, while also ensuring the sustained presence of the newly introduced entity in discourse. In contrast, constructions including stage-level predicates can accommodate unanchored pivots, since they express meaningful propositions independently. Findings also suggest that utterances featuring unanchored pivots and stage-level predicates are not indiscriminately thetic, and that defining the precise boundaries of theticity in biclausal constructions is problematic beyond prototypical cases. Rather than making arbitrary assessments on the informational partition allowed in biclausal thetic constructions, this study adopts a function-driven perspective and analyzes the correlations between pivot (un)anchoring and predicate preference in the light of the discourse-pragmatic functions that the biclausal construction can convey: Topic-promoting, Quantifying, Contrastive.