A Constrastive Study Of English And Chinese Resultative Constructions With Object

Resultative construction has long been a hotly-debated topic in linguistic circle.Previous studies both home and abroad are mainly confined to only one language,such as English resultative construction or Chinese resultative construction.There are few contrastive studies among different languages,which makes it difficult to explore the similarities and differences among different languages.Moreover,various theories employed in previous studies prove to be ineffective in explaining some syntactic and semantic problems.A new approach,therefore,is necessary for a successful study.This thesis,based on Construction Grammar, makes a contrastive study between English and Chinese resultative constructions with object(the basic sentence pattern of resultative construction),comparing their components like object,analyzing various features of the verb,semantic orientation of the complement and also discussing how meaning and form are connected,with an aim to provide a better explanation of resultative construction.According to Construction Grammar,the thesis considers that this structure is a separate construction which has its own abstract constructional meaning,existing independently of its componential meaning,with three sub-constructions:object-oriented resultative, subject-oriented resultative and verb-oriented resultative(with the latter two only applying to Chinese).On one hand,all three sub-constructions share the common abstract meaning "action-result(affect)".But,on the other hand,they have their own specific meanings,syntactic features and semantic constraints of their components.To be specific,the first sub-type,object-oriented resultative construction with object,has three arguments:agent,patient and resultative,in which the complement and the object are contributed by the construction,no matter the verb is transitive or not.And its independent constructional meaning is 'to cause the object to be affected'.The second sub-type,subject-oriented resultative with object(only applying to Chinese),also has three arguments:agent,patient and resultative,and the independent meaning is 'to cause the subject to be affected',in which the resultative argument is contributed by the construction.The third type,verb-oriented resultative with object(only applying to Chinese),also has three arguments:agent, patient and resultative,in which resultative is offered by the construction, and the specific meaning of this sub-construction is "to cause the verb to be affected".Through the comparisons between English and Chinese resultative constructions with object in terms of their classifications, syntactic and semantic features,semantic constraints and productivity,we find out that there are more differences than similarities,which reveals the typological differences of languages,and also provides us a better understanding of English and Chinese languages. This paper,employing Construction Grammar as its theoretical basis, provides a relatively comprehensive explanation of the nature of the object,the reason why one valence verb could have an object,semantic orientation of the complement and relations among constructions. Through comparative study,it reveals similarities and differences between English and Chinese resultative constructions with object and is expected to help us get a better understanding of the two languages.The present study could prove the plausibility of applying Construction Grammar to English and Chinese sentences,particularly the special ones; in addition,it also provides help and reference to teaching and learning Chinese as a foreign language and also be of great help to English-Chinese translation.