Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Goldberg (1995) defines the construction as: “C is a CONSTRUCTION iff def C is a form-meaning pair< Fi, Si > such that some aspects of Fi or some aspects of Si is not strictly predictable from C’s components parts or from other previously established constructions”. Resultative constructions are important syntactic structures in English and Chinese.
With the continuous developments of cognitive linguistics and the deepening of the researches, resultative constructions have attracted more and more attention of linguists and scholars at home and abroad. From the perspective of event structures, a resultative construction is composed of two sub-events with causal relationship. These two sub-events are expressed by predicate verbs and resultant predicates respectively. Resultant predicates are also known as resultative complements in English and Chinese. However, there are differences in verbs and resultant complements between different languages and the same language, which provides a basis for the comparison of resultative constructions between English and Chinese. Complements in resultative constructions are abbreviated to R, and the adjective complements used in resultative constructions can be called for short as RAP.
In the study of western scholars, Wechsler(2001) found that there were 24 adjectives that could be used as the RAP in English resultative constructions. Moreover, some Western scholars have found that there is an opposition phenomenon in English resultative constructions that is worth studying (Green 1974; Dowty 1979; Wechsler 2005) . In English resultative constructions, some adjectives can act as RAP, but their antonyms can not. For example:
(1) Wipe the table clean / dry.
(2) Wipe the table *dirty / *wet.
In example (1), adjectives “clean” and “dry” can act as the RAP, while their antonyms “dirty” and “wet” cannot. The expression in example (2) is ungrammatical. In Chinese resultative constructions, however, this kind of antagonism does not exist, expressions like “把桌子擦干净/干/脏/湿” are accepted and they are grammatical Chinese expressions. It can be seen that there are still some linguistic phenomena which are worth studying in English and Chinese resultative constructions.
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1.2 Research Objective and Significance
Taking the corpus of COCA and CCL as the research objects, the thesis discusses the target resultative constructions in English and Chinese under the framework of the grammar network theory.
Generally speaking, English and Chinese resultative constructions are composed of verbs and complements with the semantic meanings of “action-result”. Both Chinese and English resultative constructions express a certain state, and this state always forms a predication relation of “action-result” with the preceding verb. Complements are syntactic categories, while results are semantic concepts. There are mapping relationships between complements and results. Therefore, the syntactic expressions of English and Chinese resultative constructions can be expressed as [V Comp], and the corresponding semantic features are [ACT RESULT], that is to say, the basic semantic meanings are: “The subsequent NP of a verb changes its nature, state and other features directly or indirectly due to the action of V.” (Xiong, 2004). The grammatical meanings of English and Chinese resultative constructions can be abstracted as: An entity factor causes a final resultant state change of something else or itself due to an action (Luo, 2009).
On the basis of the previous research results, this thesis expounds the basic concepts of resultative constructions in English and Chinese, and also sorts out the previous research investigations. What needs to be explained here is that although there are different types of resultant complements in English and Chinese resultative constructions, only those resultative constructions whose resultant complements are adjectives are concerned in the whole research process.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Definitions and Classifications of Resultative Constructions
All the time, the academic circles at home and abroad have paid much attention to resultative constructions, and researches on resultative constructions play an important role in the theory and application researches of linguistics. Different scholars have made different definitions of English and Chinese resultative constructions.
2.1.1 Definitions of Resultative Constructions
In order to better explain the semantic and syntactic functions of resultative constructions and to better compare English and Chinese resultative constructions, this section describes the narrow definitions of resultative constructions.
English resultative constructions have been explored for a long time, but they are still some controversial phenomena. Halliday(1967) is generally considered to be the first leader to give the definition of English resultative constructions. According to Halliday’s (1967) view, resultative constructions are complex event structures, which are composed of active components and end state components. Rappaport and Levin(2001) subsequently defined them as event structures consisting of cause sub-events and result sub-events. For example: “Tom paint the wall a pale shade of green”. In this example, the cause sub-event is that “Tom painted the wall”. The result sub-event is that “The wall turns pale green”. With the rapid development of cognitive linguistics, Goldberg(1995) argued that resultative constructions could only be applied to arguments which potentially undergo the changes of states as the results of the action denoted by the verbs. In this thesis, Goldberg’s view is adopted, and English resultative constructions are the metaphorical extensions of the cause-motion representing the displacement.
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2.2 Previous Researches on English Resultative Constructions
According to the literature at hand, the researches on English resultative constructions can be traced back into Jespersen(1949). At present, there have been many achievements in the studies of English resultative constructions. Scholars have obtained many valuable research results from different perspectives based on different theories. Tenny(1994)studied resultative constructions from the perspective of event structures, Levin & Rappaport(1995) researched resultative constructions from the lexical semantic perspective, Hoekstra(1988), Levin & Rappaport(2001) and Van Valin(1990) adopted the perspective of syntactic structures, Goldberg(1995) carried out her research from the constructional perspective, Boas(2003) started studying from the cognitive and pragmatic perspective based on corpus. The thesis mainly groups researches on English resultative constructions into three aspects.
2.2.1 Researches on the Types
In terms of the types of English resultative constructions, researchers make different distinctions based on different criteria.
Boas(2003) classified English resultative constructions into five categories according to the semantic selection relations between the NP and verbs. The first type is resultative constructions with selected objects. The second type is resultative constructions with the mandatory choice of objects. The third category is resultative constructions with reflexive pronoun objects. The fourth type is resultative constructions whose verbs are transitive verbs with unselected objects. And resultative constructions whose verbs are intransitive verbs with unselected objects belong to the fifth type. For instance:
(7) a. Tom painted the house red. (The first type) b. John ran his shoes threadbare. (The second type) c. Jack drank himself sleepy. (The third type) d. Beryl painted the brush into pieces. (The fourth type) e. Melissa ran her feet sore. (The fifth type)
Graph 1: Network Pattern of Syntactic Generation in Cognitive Linguistics
Chapter Three Theoretical Framework .......................... 29
3.1 Construction Grammar .......................................... 29
3.1.1 Origin and Development of Construction Grammar ............................ 29
3.1.2 Main Tenets of Construction Grammar ................................................ 31
Chapter Four Semantic Features of English and Chinese Resultative Constructions . 42
4.1 Constructional Nodes in English and Chinese Resultative Constructions ...... 42
4.1.1 Relational and Inheritance Relations ................................ 42
4.1.2 Causative Event Structures .......................... 43
Chapter Five Semantic Constraints of RAP in English and Chinese Resultative Constructions ................................. 56
5.1 Quantities and Types of RAP ....................................... 56
5.1.1 RAP Types .......................................... 57
5.1.2 RAP Quantities ................................ 59
Chapter Six Cognitive Motivations and Mechanisms of English and Chinese Resultative Constructions
6.1 Cognitive Motivations
In English and Chinese resultative constructions, there are two main cognitive motivations. One is event-language mapping, the other is event-language delimiting. Delimiting is related to the term “telicity”. So it’s necessary to understand “telicity” firstly. “Telicity” has evolved from philosophy to semantics to syntactic analysis since Aristotle. Later scholars (Talmy, 2000) extended “telicity” to semantic analysis of nouns and adjectives. And it was culminated in Tenny(1994). One of the most famous claims of Tenny is the Single Delimiting Constraints, abbreviated as SDC, which means an event can only be delimited once at most. When SDC maps to language, it means that a verb can only be delimited once at most, or an event described by a verb can only have one endpoint. Goldberg(1995) made a similar point, namely Unique Path Constraint (UPC), or Unique Change of State Constrint (UCSC), to explain some co-occurrence constraint problems in resultative constructions.
6.1.1 Event-Language Mapping
The unidirectional mappings and mapping deviations between events and languages are the basis and embodiment of the diversities of “telicity”.
On the one hand, there are unidirectional mappings of events to languages. Experience-based cognitive linguistics holds the view that the generations of syntactic structures generally go through the following processes: First, as objective existences, events are composed of actions or states and their participants to form some specific event structures. Then the event structures in the external empirical world are conceptualized into the human brain to form the conceptual structures, which are further abstracted into the semantic structures of languages. Finally, for the needs of language and communication, semantic structures are structured or grammaticalized to facilitate syntactic structures, and finally form actual sentences used in specific contexts.
Graph 2: The Network Mapping Model of Syntactic Structure of Causative Events in Cognitive Linguistics
Chapter Seven Conclusions
7.1 Major Findings
The main findings of the thesis are as follows:
First, English and Chinese resultative constructions are the syntactic representations of the causative event structures. According to the iconicity of their semantic structures and causative event structures, the semantic types of English and Chinese resultative constructions can be divided into four categories: typical resultative constructions, quasi-typical resultative constructions, pseudo-typical resultative constructions and untypical resultative constructions. These four types all contain four main core elements: causers, undergoers, caused behaviors, and resultant states. Through analyzing the representations of these four types, the semantic features can be concluded. There are four semantic features in English and Chinese resultative constructions. The first semantic feature is causativity, it is the most prominent semantic feature in resultative constructions. Causers must be able to cause the results represented by the complements R. The second semantic feature is eventive which determines that causers can be dominant or recessive. The third semantic feature is directness which means that causers directly cause undergoers to produce specific results. The last semantic feature is affectedness, meaning that undergoers are directly influenced by causers, and because of the influences, the states undergo some changes and finally form certain results.
Second, in English and Chinese resultative constructions, the complements of the English and Chinese resultative constructions have different categorical properties and integrated properties. In English resultative constructions, RAP, RPP, RADP and RNP can be found, while in Chinese resultative constructions, RAP, RNP and RVP can be found. However, all kinds of R have different integration abilities, among which RAP is the strongest, and also the focus of this thesis. Based on the researches of RAP quantities and types and with the help of linguistic facts from corpus, the RAP constraints in English and Chinese resultative constructions are summarized.
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