A dynamic account of the Chinese do so construction

Abstract With the recognition of incrementality and context-relativity in language parsing and production, this study explores the significance of these two concepts in the Chinese do so ( zheme/name zuo ) construction, in which the adverb zheme/name ‘so’ precedes the verb zuo ‘do’. Within the framework of Dynamic Syntax (Cann, R. & R. Kempson. 2017. What do words do for us? Dialectica 71(3). 425–460; Cann, R., R. Kempson & L. Marten. 2005. The dynamics of language . Oxford: Elsevier; Kempson, R., E. Gregoromichelaki & C. Howes. 2019. Language as mechanisms for interaction: Towards an evolutionary tale. In International Tbilisi symposium on logic, language, and computation . Springer; Kempson, R., M.-V. Wilfried & D. Gabbay. 2001. Dynamic Syntax: The flow of language understanding . Oxford: Blackwell), it is argued that (i) the Chinese do so construction, as a kind of anaphoric expression, merely serves to draw the hearer’s attention to details related to an earlier context, with the task of creating a more definite and pertinent piece of content based on the earlier utterance to reduce the processing effort by speakers and hearers; (ii) The retrieval of semantic content for zheme/name zuo (lit. ‘so do’) is the effect of re-using contextual information; (iii) Zuo ‘do’ should be taken as a main verb since its semantic value will be substituted by a specific one from the preceding context.