A Study On The Production Mechanism Of The Chinese Construction "rang NP₁，Bei（NP₂）VP"

The construction “rang NP₁bei （NP2） VP”（“让NP₁被（NP2） VP”）, such as “让学生真正被关注”（let the students be concerned genuinely）,“让罪恶永远被善良掩埋”（let the sinalways be buried by kindness）, is a reproducible construction which is set up by two markingcompositions—the causative verb “rang”（让） and the passive marker Bei （被）. Consisting twomarking compositions, it must have its peculiar function different from both general “rang”sentence and Bei construction. This thesis makes a study on it under the guidance of theCanonical Event Model and trajector/landmark alignment concept put forward by Langacker,aiming to provide a workable account for the function and the production mechanism of theconstruction.It is hypothesized that the construction emerges because of highlighting differentelements. Different from ordinary Bei construction which expresses the patient getting itsstate changed as a result of suffering certain action and can only emphasize the agent, thisconstruction puts great emphasis on the element following Bei which can either be the agentor the action; different from the typical causative sentences introduced by “rang” in which thecauser is the focus, the patient of “rang” in this construction gets the spotlight.The construction is divided into two sub constructions namely “rang NP₁bei （NP2） VP”,“S rang NP₁bei （NP2） VP”. And each sub construction contains two sub structures since NP₂can be absent in Bei construction. The constructional motivation of this construction inquestion is the correspondence hold between the substructure of verbs and that of nouns. Asub construction of this construction—“rang NP₁bei NP₂VP”—is envisaged to be producedin the following process: The construction “rang NP₁bei NP₂VP” used as an independent clause is usually foundin the context where the speaker is not content with the state of NP₁and expects that it can getchanged through an action carried out by NP₂. And the semantic foci are the two entities—NP₁and NP₂. There is energy interaction in the construction embodied in the causative verb“rang” and VP. According to the Canonical Event Model, it involves an action chain in whichthe patient receives energy from the agent and thus tends to change. The construction inquestion profiles an energy flow:[AG₁====>[AG₂===> TH]]. The AG₁is the agent of thecausative, AG₂corresponds to that of the VP （NP2in the construction） and TH is the patient（NP₁in this construction）. The way the speaker chooses to express him based on his intentionis determined by the construal relation between himself and the scene to be structured. In theconstruction,“rang”, as a causative verb, designates a relational predicate which determinesits trajector/landmark alignment—one trajector and two landmarks. VP has its own trajector and landmark in its internal structure. The action head—trajector of the “rang”—does not getspecified and NP₁（the action chain tail） elaborates the first landmark of “rang”（which islabeled as LM1）; while the whole target process is its second landmark （which is labeled asLM2in the figure）. On the one hand, trajector and landmark are the prominent participants ina relational predicate, since the trajector of “rang” is unspecified, its first landmark NP₁getshighlighted. On the other hand, in the target process represented by a Bei construction, thepatient NP₁elaborates VP’s trajector and thus the prominent of NP₁is beyond dispute.However, the NP₂, lying upstream in the energy flow and being the agent of VP, specifies thelandmark of VP. Nevertheless, NP₂is part of the secondary landmark of “rang” and thelandmark of VP, which gives NP₂salience. In this way, NP₁and NP₂as well as the energyinteraction involved are on stage and become foci of the speaker. The speaker successivelyputs emphasis on NP₁and NP₂by his construal and coding. Similarly, the same manner canbe applied to other sub constructions, but only different in some details owing to the differentconstrual and coding decisions the speaker made. It is hoped that a production mechanism ofthe construction is provided with a workable explanation based on the psychological reality.