Contemporary Chinese Predicate Resultant Asymmetry Study

Verb-resultative construction is a special kind of construction in Chinese. There are already a lot of researches on it. With the help of asymmetry and mark theory in typology, and the categorization theory in cognitive linguistics, combining the method of distribution in structuralism, this paper discusses the asymmetric phenomena of the Chinese VR-constructions, and its motivations on cognition.Chapter 1 is an introduction about why we choose the asymmetry phenomena in VR-constructions as the research topic. In this chapter, we talk about the meaning and the value about asymmetry in the VR-constructions studies. Finally, we state the theory basis of this paper. In the opinion of the traditional grammar, the language is a homogenous system. Aabstracting and generalizing from the homogenous language system, the grammar system is also parallel and symmetric. But more and more researches have verified that symmetry is the ideal model of cognitive in the human brains. But asymmetry is the universal in the human languages.Chapter 2 is a research on asymmetric phenomena where verbs used as the complement in the Chinese VR-constructions. Taking the 136 monosyllabic verbs of the first level from the 《汉语水平 等级与汉字等级大纲》 as the examples, we find some asymmetry in structure. ① The distrubution of the verb in the VR-structure are asymmetric. "A" groupe of verbs tend to be the predicators in the VR-construction, "B" groupe tend to be the complements, and "C" groupe can appear in both positions. With the analysis of the process structure of the verb, we clarified their semantic features. We find that "B"groupe of verbs has lost most characters of the prototypical verb. Their syntax positions as complements are fixed. But the position of "C" groupe verbs is still unfixed. (2) The type of structure according to the verbs of different type of semantics are asymmetric. There are only "自主动词+ 非自主动词" and "非自主动词+非自主动词" ,but not "自主动词+自主动词" , "非自主动词+自主动词 ". We find that this phenomenon is formed by the special chareters in syntax and semantics of the "非自主动词".Chapter 3 is a discussion on asymmetric phenomena where the adjectives used as the complement in the VR-constructions. Firstly, we hold that the VR-constructions with the adjective complement are a complex category, which consists of three types of sematic syntactic strucures. The members of the category have varied semantic referrings. The semantics of the complements in the VR-constructions tend to refer to the objectives of the VR-constructions. Secondly, according to the varied semantic referring of the complements, there is the distribution order of the constructions, from the high frequency to the low, that is, Patient—Agent—Instrumental\Oblique and other semantic roles. With the matching rule of the semantic roles and the structure roles, we hold that when the complements referring to the Patient, it is the conventional result of the verb. Our teaching planning could get the benefits from this order. Thirdly, there is an obvious asymmetry in the verb-copy structure among the VR-structures. There are analogy from the prototypical construction to the edge members, depending on the help of the world knowledge and syntactic context. The...