The Interaction Between The Resultative Constructions And Metaphors:From The Perspective Of Usage-based Model

With the development of metaphors and further studies of the construction grammar,the interaction between constructions and metaphors and its influence on the semantics of constructions have drawn people's attention gradually(Sullivan 2007,2013;Sweetser & Dancygier,2014)and now has become a research hotspot in the field of construction grammar.However,it is a pity that the current relevant studies about the interaction between constructions and rhetoric(especially metaphors)are mainly on the theoretical level and merely focus on the types of the interaction,thus it still needs a deep exploration of the formation and motivation of these interacted relations and requires a quantitative empirical data support.The resultative constructions can be regarded as a metaphorical extension of the caused-motion constructions,the necessary constraint of the realization of which can be stated as ?the resultative construction can only apply to arguments that potentially undergo a change of state as a result of the action denoted by the verb?(Goldberg,1995,pp.180-181).In recent years,quite a few professors have devoted to studying the resultative constructions from semantic and syntactic perspectives,including the semantics of the resultatives,the constraints on the realizations of the resultatives,and the selection and distribution of the resultative phrases in constructions.But it has not been brought to the forefront yet that why metaphors can exist in the resultatives and how the interactions between them can take place.In order to demonstrate the interaction between metaphors and the resultative constructions in a systematic way,and to obtain their forming mechanism and motivation from the empirical perspective,the current thesis dedicates to investigating the resultative constructions within the usage-based theory in combination with Construction Grammar and conceptual theory and attempts to solve the following three research questions:1)What types of interaction can be found between metaphors and the resultative constructions?2)How do the interactive relations between metaphors and the resultatives take place?3)Why do various kinds of interaction exist between metaphors and resultative constructions?In order to answer the above questions,we establish an integrated analytic framework,maintaining the event-based semantic analysis,metaphor evocation analysis and collostructional analysis for the first place.Then six typical verbs(freeze,kill,drive,paint,run,yell)occurring in the resultative constructions are selected as searching objects on the basis of the classification of the resultatives provided by Boas(2003)and extract eligible data from COCA.According to the MIP mentioned by Pragglejaz Group(2007)and relevant identification domain method in conceptual metaphor theory,the metaphorical resultatives are filtered.After that,based on the analysis of event-based frames in the metaphorical resultatives in terms of transitivity,the interaction types are figured out.The forming mechanism of the interaction is generalized in virtue of the metaphor evoking analysis of the transitive resultative constructions and intransitive ones.In the last,the final motivation of the interaction is construed in light of the collostructional analysis and correlation analysis.The main research findings are shown as follows:1)On account of the fact that there is a difference of the transitive resultatives and the intransitive resultatives in syntax,the interaction types are shown from the perspective of transitivity.In light of the analytic results from the event-based semantic frames,it is found that five interaction types exist in metaphors and the transitive resultatives,which are NSNT(neutral domain + source domain + neutral domain + target domain),NSTT(neutral domain + source domain + target domain + target domain),NSTS(neutral domain + source domain + target domain + source domain),TSNT(target domain + source domain + neutral domain + target domain)and TSTS(target domain + source domain + target domain + source domain;and another three types of interaction are discovered in metaphorical intransitive resultative constructions,that is,TST(target domain + source domain + target domain),TSS(target domain + source domain + source domain)and NST(neutral domain + source domain + target domain).2)According to the syntactic distinction of the transitive resultative constructions and intransitive resultatives,the formation mechanism of the types of metaphorical interaction is different as well.There is a common ground in both the transitive resultative constructions and the intransitive ones,which is that the verbs must evoke the source domain.In the transitive resultatives,if the resultative phrase evokes the target domain,both the subject and the object may evoke the target domain or the neutral domain;if the resultative phrase evokes the source domain together with the verb,the object can only motivate the target domain while the subject has two choices of domain neutral or target domain.In the intransitive resultatives,at least one argument structure,the resultative phrase or the subject,has to evoke the target domain.On the one hand,if the subject evokes the target domain,there is no limit for the resultative phrase to evoke a metaphor input domain.On the other hand,if the resultative phrase lies in the same domain with the verb,then the subject must evoke the target domain to guarantee the formation of the metaphorical resultatives.3)The motivation for the interaction between metaphors and the resultatives is explained from the perspective of collostructional analysis and correlation coefficient.By means of colloxeme analysis it is found that there is a significant correlation between metaphors and the resultative constructions.The collostructional strength of both metaphors and different types of the resultatives is significant and the corresponding p value is less than 0.001,except that in the resultatives with yell.Such a significant correlation denotes that metaphors play a dominant role in determining and motivating the formation of the resultatives.In addition,the correlation curve is used to verify the significance of the metaphor and the resultatives with yell and figures out that the correlation trend is similar with that of the resultatives with drive and run,whose R value is high and the interaction types of which are all distinct.Given the fact that the interaction between metaphors and the resultative constructions with drive and run is completely significant,thus that it can be concluded that the metaphorical interaction in the resultatives with yell is proper as well.In summary,the motivation for the interaction between metaphors and the resultatives is influenced by the distributions of argument structures in them as well as the internal formation mechanism.In other words,the distribution of argument structures in the resultatives can make a difference on the mappings of the metaphor input domains;and the existence of metaphors can also change the realization and formation mechanism of the resultatives.This thesis discusses the interaction types of the resultative constructions and metaphors on the basis of the event-based semantic frame analysis and delineates the formation mechanism and motivation about the metaphors in the resultatives on the ground of metaphor evocation and collostructional analysis,which provides a new perspective for the metaphorical studies on the construction grammar.Meanwhile,it can propose some methodological enlightenment about the quantitative empirical study on the construction grammar.