Research on Self-Organization of Parallel Structures

Author: Ma Qinghua
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-12-01
Features: This paper takes parallelism, one of the simplest and most primitive structural relationships in language, as its object of study. It explores the internal factors of this structure in various forms of organization or meaning organization, such as combinability, ordering, simplification-complexity alternation, changes and maintenance of relational values, and marking. Particular attention is paid to examining the differences between decisive constants and interfering variables and their internal or mutual interaction relationships. Through syntactic and semantic research on parallel structures, it reveals the internal mechanisms and principles of self-organization, competition, coordination, and optimization, making it an in-depth specialized study within the framework of "language self-organization theory." Previous research on parallel structures has primarily been static, lacking dynamic studies and systematicity, failing to understand the essential connections between various theoretical contents, and even being unclear about the driving forces behind such connections. Without a clear understanding of these connections and their causes, it is impossible to truly grasp the essence of the characteristics of parallel structures. The self-organization theory of language systems posits that any change in a factor within the language system will trigger changes in related factors. Based on this theoretical foundation, this paper conducts a systematic dynamic study of the syntactic and semantic aspects of parallel structures.
Centered around four types of subsystems: Structure (S), Item (I), Marker (M), and Cognition (including experience, will, understanding, memory, etc.) (C), six important vectors are derived from or leading to S, under which eight action relationships such as "absorption, control, value change, allocation, periphery, adaptation, linkage, and ordering" can be listed. The entire paper is divided into six parts: "Introduction, Linkage, Word Order, Value Change, Marking, and Conclusion." The concept of "periphery" is relatively to "internal setting" and nearly permeates all action domains, thus scattered throughout the sections on linkage, word order, value change, and marking. Adaptation and allocation are only slightly involved, scattered across linkage, word order, value change, and conclusion. Adaptation is relative to linkage, with the former focusing on external adaptability and the latter on internal linkability. Allocation discusses the conditions for extracting common factors and allocating adjacent items in parallel structures.
Part 1: Introduction outlines the theoretical level achieved in previous research on parallel structures, including fundamental understandings in areas such as the scope of parallelism, relationships between parallel items, the relationship between structure and markers, and the relationship between structure and external syntactic environments. It also clarifies the research objectives of this paper, introduces the theoretical foundation of self-organization, particularly its dynamic system (including system variables, system dynamics, and the basic principles of self-organized structures), and derives all the action relationships to be explored, such as linkage and ordering. This section also defines parallel structures, analyzes their types, and derives some important and fundamental categories and terms.
Part 2: Linkage begins with word-level parallelism and analyzes the conditions required for items to form parallel structures, concluding that under parallel linkage conditions, "tight linkage is stricter than loose linkage, markerless is stricter than marked, and internal setting is stricter than external setting." These three basic conclusions are then verified using parallel structures at higher levels, yielding the same results, demonstrating their transitivity across syntactic levels. Under the vectors of "tight linkage → loose linkage" and "markerless → marked," pauses and marker components exhibit binding force and competitive control force. This also serves as one of the theoretical justifications for the claim that Chinese relies primarily on functional words as grammatical means. Under the vector of "internal setting → external setting," detailed analysis is conducted on two types of peripheral parallelism: class peripheral parallelism and coincidental peripheral parallelism. It is argued that the parallel structures of any type of coincidental peripheral parallelism (including value peripheral parallelism, marginal peripheral parallelism, core peripheral parallelism, class peripheral parallelism, and pattern peripheral parallelism) are made possible by the selection constraints of other components in the sentence.
Part 3: Word Order introduces a novel classification of word order and analyzes, pointing out that peripheral order and perceptual descending order, as well as sequential order from first to last, are semantically prior to order types, while other word order types belong to narrow orders. It further explores the reasons behind the formation of the scope of word order power. This section also analyzes the principle of ordering in parallel structures, indicating that compatibility, competition, encroachment, weighting, alternation, and filtering are ways to handle order conflicts or coordination issues in the ordering process. The degree of freedom in word order exists on a continuum from "freedom → solidification" corresponding to the descending level from clause parallelism → word parallelism → morpheme parallelism.
Part 4: Value Change focuses on discussing the trajectories and mechanisms of shifts and controlled changes in predicative parallel relationships, proving that the disruption of experiential inference or project equilibrium patterns can lead to shifts toward non-parallel relationships such as continuation or turnarounds. It reveals various facilitating or constraining factors that interfere with the formation of these shifts. The analysis of controlled changes finds that concurrent parallelism and simultaneous parallelism are basic-level parallel relationships, while enumerative parallelism and alternating parallelism are secondary-level parallel relationships, and filtering parallelism is a high-level parallel relationship. High-level or secondary-level parallel relationships often reduce to basic-level concurrent or simultaneous parallelism after markers are legitimately eliminated.
Part 5: Marking argues and reveals the various semantic interactions between relational markers and syntactic structures from the perspectives of control and absorption, pointing out that the controlling role of markers manifests at all levels of syntax, semantics, and phonology. The syntactic control functions include binding control, word order activation, competitive control, and sentence completion control, while the semantic and phonological control functions primarily manifest as optimization control (e.g., semantic optimization and rhythmic optimization). It also argues for the mechanism of absorption, including gradual grammaticalization and abrupt structural evolution, as well as the relationship between absorption methods and conditions. Absorption methods include controlled absorption and compatible absorption, with controlled absorption further divided into binding absorption and competitive absorption, and compatible absorption into full compatible absorption and partial compatible absorption. Semantic infusion, semantic resonance, and experiential inference are the three conditions for absorption. Single-marker grammaticalization occurs in two ways: external transformation and internal transformation. The study on the trajectory of single-marker internal transformation validates the conclusions on structural relational value change in Part 4. The discussion on dual-marker formatting covers the types, characteristics, and conditions for obtaining formatting qualifications for dual markers.
Part 6: Conclusion summarizes and integrates the conclusions of the entire paper, conducting a high-level induction and refinement from the perspective of language self-organization, outlining the self-organizing dynamic system of parallel structures. The main innovations, significance, and features of this paper are:
1. Conducting novel and creative detailed analyses in areas previously only superficially explored by existing theories (e.g., "linkage, word order, marking") and pioneering research in areas not previously addressed by existing theories (e.g., "value change"), revealing the dynamic patterns embedded within them.
2. Revealing the intrinsic organic connections between the four elements of "structure, item, marker, and cognition" based on solid and meticulous analysis. For example, the "shifts" discussed in Part 4's "value change" are mutually corroborated by the "single-marker grammaticalization" in Part 5, which is then elevated to a new theoretical level to summarize the internal principles of structural relational marking.
3. Conducting innovative research on parallel structures based on self-organization theory, revealing the internal mechanisms and principles of self-organization, competition, and coordination within language. This is the first systematic attempt in China to introduce self-organization theory into syntactic structure research, enriching and refining the theory of language self-organization and providing practical methods for self-organization research.
4. Parallel structures are not only one of the most basic and primitive types of syntactic structures but also a high-level structural type in language development. Many non-parallel structures are derived from them through shifts or controlled changes. Research on parallel structures lays a solid foundation for further exploration of sentence complexity and diversity.
Due to the fact that much of the work was done from scratch, the complexity was extraordinary, and there were still many shortcomings in consideration, further refinement is needed.