A Study of Liejin Poetic Couplets from the Perspective of Cognitive Linguistics

Liejin is a particular poetic form in Chinese, and it is characterized by the pile-up of nouns along a poetic line without a predicate verb but still capable of vivid expression.Within the framework of traditional Chinese philology, liejin is usually regarded as a figure of speech with a symmetric structure.In recent years, some linguists have approached liejin with the conceptualization of time-space distinction or time-space conflation, but still have not elucidated the constructional mechanism of liejin.This paper makes an attempt to probe into the mechanism of liejin from the perspective of Construction Grammar.It is assumed that the pile-up of nouns along a poetic line comes up with dynamicity or temporality by sequential scanning and a symmetric structure is holistically formed as a gestalt by a higher combination of two symmetric poetic lines.Liejin as a grammatical construction is equipped with its particular constructional meaning.The paper concludes by claiming that the research has implications for Cognitive Linguistics, foreign language teaching in China, teaching Chinese as a foreign language, and translation studies.