Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 The Rationale of the Research
Causation, which means an action is endowed with the meaning of ordering, causing, commanding and permitting (Jiang 2000), is a common phenomenon in human languages, and it has become a research focus in the linguistic field for a long time. Numerous scholars at home and abroad have investigated it from the perspectives of syntax（Wang and Xu 2005; He and Wang 2002; Wang and Qiu 2016; Shen, He and Gu 2001:69-135; Fan 2017）, semantics (Deng 1991; Huang 2015; Rao 2007; Wan 2004; Huang 2004; Yuan, Chu and Wang 2017), cognitive linguistics (Cheng 2001; Liang 2002; Yang 2016; Xiong and Liang 2003; Xiong and Yang 2010; Zhang 2011) , typology (Niu 2007a; Niu 2008; Xiang 2011), diachronic linguistics (Xu 1998; Xu 2003; Zhang 2006; Niu 2007b), and Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday 1994; Fawcett 1995; Huang 1998; He et al 2017; He and Zhang 2017; Zhang 2015; Qi 2007 ), etc. They explore the definition, classification of causation, and the causative elements in different causative constructions and analyze the features, distinctions, usages and the generation of different causative constructions.
Although there are numerous studies on causative constructions, few studies address the issues of both the form and meaning of causative constructions. Causative constructions are important syntactic structures in human languages. Chinese causative constructions play an important role in Chinese syntactic constructions. Nowadays, the study of Chinese has been a fairly hot topic and more and more people have become interested in Chinese. However, there arise various difficulties in learning Chinese causative constructions. Making contrastive studies about different causative constructions in Chinese can enhance people’s understanding of the similarities and differences between them and is conducive to the study of Chinese. Therefore, this study focuses on Chinese causative constructions in an attempt to provide some insights for the learning and teaching of Chinese.
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1.2 The Research Objects
Comrie (1989) classifies causative constructions into three types: morphological causatives, lexical causatives and analytic causatives (also known as periphrastic causatives). Analytic causatives are also called syntactic causatives or periphrastic causatives, of which the causing event and the caused result are expressed by independent predicates. This research will focus on Chinese analytic causatives that is based on the structure “NP1 + V1 + NP2 + V2 (+NP3)” in which shi causative constructions and imperative causative constructions are the most typical in Chinese causative constructions. Therefore, the research objects are scoped to Chinese shi causative constructions constructed by the causative verb like shi (使), rang (让), ling (令) and jiao (叫) which is grammaticalized and specialized in expressing causative meaning and Chinese imperative causative constructions with the verbs like pai (“派”, appoint), cui (“催”, urge), bipo (“逼迫”, force) and mingling (“命令”, command) which is endowed with the meaning of ordering, commanding, requesting and forcing. For example:
(1) 请吃饭使事物滑溜顺利。 (钱钟书.)(2) 这个见解使我豁然开朗。 (死于自己的迷宫的阿本.) (3) 你太让我失望了。 (柳建伟, 突出重围.) (4) 回信令我哭笑不得。 (1994 年报刊精选\08.) (5) 领导派我去上海。 (CWAC, ALL0048.) (6) 牛牧师催车夫快走。 (老舍长篇 3.)
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Introduction
“Causation” is a pervasive phenomenon in human languages and it has become a research focus of the linguistic field with the rapid development of modern linguistics. Many scholars from different fields have studied the connotation, classification, syntactic structure and semantic features of Chinese causative constructions from various perspectives, including morphology, semantics, cognitive linguistics, logistics and typology, etc, which has deepened the understanding of causative constructions and enhanced the learning of such constructions. This Chapter will make a review of the studies on Chinese causative constructions of different schools from different perspectives, the studies on English causative constructions from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics and the studies on the Cardiff Grammar, and make comments on the studies.
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2.2 Literature Review on Chinese Causative Constructions
2.2.1 Definition of Causative Constructions
Causative constructions have attracted the extensive attention of linguists from various fields. Scholars at home and abroad hold different opinions on the definition of causative constructions. As far as foreign scholars are concerned, Talmy (1976:48) points out that one event takes place due to the occurrence of another event, otherwise it won’t happen. Thus, a kind of causative relationship exists between the two events. The event happening earlier is called the causing event and the one happening subsequently is called the caused event, which forms a causative situation.
Any Causative situation involves two component situations, the cause and its effect (result). Let us imagine the following scene: the bus fails to turn up; as a result, I am late for a meeting. In this simple example, the bus’s failing to turn up functions as cause, and my being late for the meeting functions as effect. These two micro-situations thus combine together to give a single complex macro-situation, the macro-situation. (Comrie 1989：165).
Dixon (2000: 30) proposes that a causative construction involves the specification of an additional argument, a Causer which is an entity, an event or state that initiates or controls the activity. Domestically, Fan (2000) puts forward that a causative construction is a kind of grammatical construction reflecting a kind of objective fact that some entity, including behaviors, change of activity or quality, comes into some situation due to the effect or influence of some causative subjects instead of being triggered automatically. The effect or influence the causative subject has on the entity is called the causation. Jiang (2000) remarks that causation means that the action is endowed with the meaning of ordering, causing, commanding and permitting.
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Chapter 3 Theoretical Framework ..................................... 26
3.1 The Overview of the Cardiff Grammar ................................... 26
3.2 The Relationship between the Cardiff Grammar and the Sydney Grammar ......... 26
3.3 The Syntax in the Cardiff Grammar ................... 28
Chapter 4 The Functional Syntactico-Semantic Analysis of Chinese Shi Causative Constructions ................... 42
4.1 Introduction .................................... 42
4.2 The Classification of Chinese Causative Constructions ........................................ 42
Chapter 5 The Functional Syntactico-Semantic Analysis of Chinese Imperative Causative Constructions .................................. 134
5.1 Introduction ................................... 134
5.2 Chinese Imperative Causative Constructions ................................ 134
Chapter 5 The Functional Syntactico-Semantic Analysis of Chinese Imperative Causative Constructions
5.1 Introduction
This chapter will make a functional syntactico-semantic analysis of Chinese Imperative causative constructions within the Cardiff Grammar and investigate the syntactic and semantic feature of different types of Imperative causative constructions. Through the preliminary analysis of the collected 326 Chinese imperative clauses from the Center for Chinese Linguistics (CCL) of Peking University, according to the process type, Chinese imperative causative constructions can be classified into two types: action imperative causative constructions and communicative imperative causative constructions.
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Chapter 6 Conclusion
6.1Major Findings of the Research
causative constructions, locational shi causative constructions and matching shi causative constructions. The Causer may play the participant role of the Agent or the Agent-Phenomenon in the transitivity analysis which is realized by the Subject that can be filled by a nominal group that means things or human, or filled by a clause which is an event semantically. The Causee may assume the participant role of the Affected, the Affected-Emoter, the Affected-Perceiver, the Affected-Cognizant, the Affected-Desiderator, the Affected-Carrier or the Affected-Possessor in the transitivity analysis that is realized by the Complement usually filled by a nominal group syntactically. The Effect is mapped out to the Process and the participant which may be the Range, the Phenomenon, the Attribute, the Affected-Possessed, the Location, the Destination, the Matchee and the Communicated in the transitivity analysis that is realized by the second Complement filled by a nominal group or a clause that means an event in semantics. Additionally, the Effect can be fused with the process realized by the Main Verb syntactically when the Effect and the Main Verb mutually realize the Process in the action, emotive, desiderative and attributive shi causative constructions.
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