Comparing the Syntax of the Verb /lên/ in Thai and /wán/ in Mandarin: Structural Patterns and Structural Constraints
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Abstract
Background and Objectives: Although Thai /lên and Mandarin /wán/ are commonly glossed as ‘play’, they diverge in how meanings are distributed across constructions, so lexical equivalence does not guarantee structural equivalence. In particular, they contrast in object realization, complement packaging (Thai more analytic vs. Mandarin more compact patterns), and the licensing of figurative and stance readings (Thai more template-bound vs. Mandarin more productive /wán/+X frames). This study aims to identify and compare the core construction types of /lên/ and /wán/, specify where functional equivalence holds, and show that cross-linguistic substitutability is construction-dependent rather than word-to-word.
Methods: A qualitative, corpus-based comparison employed Tagmemic slot–filler analysis for structural classification and Construction Grammar for construction-specific interpretations and constraints. The Thai data were drawn from the Thai National Corpus (TNC) and Thairath Online (2021–2023), with reference to the Royal Institute Dictionary (2011) and Khlang Kham; the Mandarin data were drawn from the CCL corpus (1990s–2020s). After screening and deduplication within construction types, the observation set contains 977 Thai and 885 Mandarin instances.
Results: Thai /lên/ clusters into seven recurrent patterns, with a strong preference for nominal fillers in the
object slot; extended readings were typically licensed by specific templates such as /lên kàp/ + NP (co-participation/interaction targets and conventional figurative uses), V/VP + /lên/ and /lên-lên/ (stance marking and mitigating seriousness), and clause-linked complements. Mandarin /wán/ showed ten recurrent patterns with greater flexibility, including nominalized/elliptical object expressions, compact complements (e.g., V-de-Adj), stance templates (V-zhe-/wán/), and reduplication (/wánwán/). Overall, the similarities between the two languages are most evident in literal “play” contexts, while notable differences emerge in object patterns, complement encoding, and the licensing of figurative/stance meanings.
Application of this study: The findings support teaching, bilingual lexicography, and translation by turning recurrent patterns into practical templates and mapping rules. For pedagogy and dictionaries, senses can be presented by construction and idioms treated as fixed form–meaning pairings with usage constraints. For translation, the construction inventory helps select structure-level equivalents when direct verb substitution fails, especially in figurative uses, stance-marking constructions, and complement constructions.
Conclusions: This research aimed to study and compare the use of the verbs /len/ (“play”) in Thai and /wan/ (玩) in Mandarin Chinese in order to explain the relationship between meaning and linguistic structure that governs their usage. Drawing on corpus-based data and employing a combination of Tagmemic analysis and Construction Grammar, the study found that although both verbs share the basic meaning of “play,” they differ significantly in terms of object patterns, complement encoding, and the extension of metaphorical and attitudinal meanings. The equivalence between “เล่น” and “玩” is therefore structural rather than word-for-word. Thai exhibits extended meanings that are tied to specific constructional patterns, whereas Chinese shows greater flexibility and is more conducive to semantic extension through the “玩 + X” framework. The findings can be applied to language teaching, bilingual lexicography, and cross-linguistic translation. Future studies should incorporate spoken language data and quantitative analysis to more comprehensively examine differences across idiomatic expressions and text types.
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