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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.

Sec. Educational Psychology

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1635740

This article is part of the Research TopicCulture and Emotion in Educational Dynamics - Volume IVView all 9 articles

On the Socio-Cognitive Coercion Mechanism of the Formation of Mandarin Construction "V+Ta(he)+XP"

Provisionally accepted
  • Chengdu University, Chengdu, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

This study employs a cognitive-sociolinguistic framework to investigate the formation mechanism of the Mandarin single-object construction "V+Ta+XP" and the grammaticalization of the non-referential pronoun "Ta". Building on the hypothesis that "Ta" originates from the abbreviation of the expletive phrase "Ta x de", we conduct a comparative analysis of the syntactic, pragmatic, and socio-cognitive features of the "V+Ta+XP" construction and its precursor "V+Ta x de+XP" structure. Drawing on 402 "V+Ta x de+XP" and 607 "V+Ta+XP" instances extracted from the CCL and BCC corpora, our findings reveal systematic parallels in syntactic configurations and pragmatic functions, alongside critical socio-cognitive divergences. Specifically, the "V+Ta+XP" construction emerges as a de-vulgarized variant of "V+Ta x de+XP", driven by socio-cognitive coerciona process that suppresses vulgar components "x de" to mitigate face-threatening effects while preserving syntactic integrity and emotional salience. By integrating construction grammar, politeness theory, and sociolinguistic variation, this study demonstrates how social norms (e.g., register formality, gender dynamics) and cognitive-emotional needs jointly shape grammaticalization. The proposed framework advances coercion theory by highlighting the interplay of linguistic structure, pragmatic adaptation, and socio-cultural constraints, offering novel insights into the evolution of non-referential elements in Mandarin and their role in balancing expressive force with social acceptability.

Keywords: the "V+Ta+XP" construction, the "V+Ta x de+XP" structure, Socio-cognitive coercion, "De vulgarization", Cognitive sociolinguistics

Received: 27 May 2025; Accepted: 04 Aug 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Pan Zhang, Chengdu University, Chengdu, China

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