Study On The English Causative Construction From The Perspective Of Grammatical Metonymy

The concept of causation ubiquitously exists in the physical world which is filled with various kinds of causal relations. It reflects such an objective reality that one entity imposes external force on another entity which undergoes some changes in terms of location or state in the physical world. Language is the basic way by human beings to express the concept, which undoubtedly constitutes an indispensable category in language. The English causative construction is the corresponding linguistic representation of the causative semantic category as well as the mapping or conceptualization of the causative events existing in the physical world that is structured by a variety of causes, which makes the causative construction a universal linguistic expression in human languages.Within the framework of grammatical metonymy, the current thesis has carried out a study of the cognitive motivation underlying the English causative construction. Specific research problems include the cognitive models of grammatical metonymy behind noun-verb conversion, adjective-verb conversion, causativization of intransitive verbs and transitive verbs without the causative meaning as well as the subject change, and the operational process of grammatical metonymy to resolve the semantic conflict between the meaning of the construction and that of inserted lexical items. The major findings of this thesis are represented as follows.Firstly, the thesis reveals that the cognitive models of grammatical metonymy work as the cognitive foundation behind the noun-verb conversion, adjective-verb conversion, and causativization of intransitive verbs and transitive verbs without the causative meaning. The analysis shows that it is grammatical metonymies that sanction the nouns and adjectives to enter causative constructions. Besides, the intransitive verbs and transitive ones with the causative meaning are motivated by several kinds of grammatical metonymies. At last, the subject change is caused by the metonymic operation on the semantic roles in action ICM.Secondly, the study has explored the means and the process to resolve the semantic conflict between the meaning of English causative construction and that of the inserted verbs. When the meaning of construction and that of lexical items instantiating it are incompatible with each other, the constructional meaning probably coerces lexical meanings. Semantic coercion can be realized by grammatical metonymy based on the action ICM in which one salient semantic role is adopted as the metonymic focus to afford mental access to the target.Thirdly, the research also illustrates that the recategorization of the word class, quantitative valency extension and the change of semantic roles are realized by means of grammatical metonymy having syntactic consequences on the English causative construction on the basis that the distribution of syntactic structures is sensitive to the target meaning of the metonymic operation which changes not only the semantic meaning of a lexical item but also its grammatical properties.The study is of great significance in shedding light on the cognitive mechanism underlying the English causative construction and extending the scope of the application of conceptual metonymy. Furthermore, the research also demonstrates the strong explanatory power in the interpretation of grammatical metonymy, which, to some extent, testifies that grammar is basically metonymic.