Abstract:

Based on the spoken Chinese and the interview data, this paper explores the patterns of windowing of attention and conceptual splicing of the agentive causal chain that contains multiple sub-events. In terms of the windowing of attention, it is found that the agentive causal chain presents five patterns of windowing and they differ in the types of sub-events which are windowed, but the order of windowing in each pattern follows the arrangement of sub-events in the causal chain. In addition, the speaker’s physical experience has an impact on the choice of patterns of windowing. In terms of patterns of conceptual splicing, it is found that the agentive causal chain presents four patterns of conceptual splicing and they differ in the way the windowed sub-events are grouped. The degree of contiguity in the sequence between the windowed sub-events has an impact on the grouping of the windowed sub-events.

Key words: agentive causal chain, patterns of windowing of attention, patterns of conceptual splicing, physical experience, the degree of contiguity