An Analysis Of The Constraint Conditions Of English "SVOC" Resultative Constuctions

As an important but complex linguistic phenomenon, the resultative construction (RC) occupies a unique place in the study of syntax and semantics. It has been a major focus of research on the syntax-semantics interface of recent decades. Analyses from the approach of lexical semantics are not good because of lack of enough generalization, and conceptual structure suffers as well by focusing on the generalized conceptual structures and leaving verbs out of account. This paper aims to fins out the rule of the formation of "SVOC" RC by analyzing the syntactic features of RC, the rule of the formation of the main verb and CAP, CPP, CADP and CNP, the semantic relation between verbs and arguments.There are8types of "SVOC" RC by matching the different syntactic categories of object and complement, that is:On+CAP, On+CPP, On+CADP, On+CNP, Orefl+CAP, Orefl.+CPP, Opron.+CAP, Opron.+CPP.We found the rules of the formation of "SVOC" RC in syntactic structure by comparing to the depictive constructions.First, the complement must closely follow the object in "SVOC" RC, whereas depictives felicitously follow them.Second, when both occur in the same clause the resultative must come before the depictive.Third, resultative secondary predicates cannot follow a double object construction.Forth, a resultative predicate can only be associated with the underlying direct object of the verb, forming the logical subject-predicates relation.We found the rules of formation of "SVOC" RC in semantic by analyzing the rule of the formation of the main verb and CAP, CPP, CADP and CNP, the semantic relation between verbs and arguments. The semantic rules include:First, The semantic components include:causer, causee, causation act and causation result, which determines the semantic relation between the argument structure A and the argument structure B is CAUSE-RESULT. The external argument Nl must be the causer, while the internal argument N2must be the causee, with the semantic feature of patient and change. Second, with the semantic features of [+predicate],[+dynamy],[+influence] and [-result],8types of verbs can be the main verbs of "SVOC" RC. The main verbs and the resultative predicates must have at least one pair of the same semantic component.Third, there is no time interval between the argument structure A and the argument structure B.The rule of formation of "SVOC" RC in syntactic and semantic constraint is closely relational. Only when the structure fits to all the constraint can it be the "SVOC"RC.