Conceptual Construction And Semantic Properties Of ECMC

Caused-motion is the situation in which an entity causes another to change its position by exerting external force.It is a common behavior in human daily life.As the crossing field of motion event category and causative category,caused-motion has its unique features in semantic concepts and syntactic expressions.Semantically,it constructs the caused-motion causation(CM causation,for short),and syntactically,it represents as caused-motion construction(CM Causation,for short).From the perspective of cognitive linguistics,this thesis intends to explore the cognitive rationale for the conceptual construction of English causedmotion construction(ECMC,for short)and aim to define the five internal semantic components in its semantic structure.Moreover,under the guidance of prototype theory,this thesis endeavors to analyze the metaphorical and metonymical mechanisms of five internal semantic components in ECMC through self-built corpus,and further utilizes the Force-Dynamic Patterns to present the construction process of six semantic categories of ECMC.This study mainly concerns on three research questions:1)What is the cognitive rationale for the conceptual construction of CM causation?2)What are the internal semantic components of CM Causation?And what properties do they have?3)How does the semantic structure of ECMC construct from the perspective of Force-Dynamic patterns?First of all,based on the.basic principles of embodied philosophy and essential features of the embodiment of language,this study systematically analyzes the cognitive rationale of the conceptual construction of ECMC,The analysis shows that the conceptual construction of ECMC is based on the interactive experiences between people and the objective world.Motion events and CM situation in daily life provide a realistic empirical basis for the conceptual construction of ECMC,and the image schema of CM causation is abstracted on this basis.In addition,there is a certain logical relationship among the basic components of the image schema of the preconceptual CM causation,which can be projected to the semantic level and finally contribute to the formation of the semantic structure of ECMC.Second,this study adopts the usage-based analytical pattern,established on a great deal of data collected from English corpus,to classify and explain the five basic semantic components in the semantic structure of ECMC.In addition,according to the prototype theory,it respectively discusses the prototypical features of semantic components and their evolution and expansion mechanism in the semantic structure of ECMC,which finds out that ECMC contains five types of Causer,four types of Driving-Force,five types of Causee,five types of Motion space and three types of Path.Each of them constitutes a semantic category,and metaphorically extended around the prototypical central meaning.Last,this study carries out a deep investigation on the source of the Driving-Force component and the interactive mechanism between Causer and Causee from the perspective of semantic force-dynamics,and uses the schema of force-dynamic patterns to present the construction process of the six semantic categories of ECMC.It finds out that the Driving-Force of ECMC is varied,which contains steady-state force and shifting force.The force-dynamic patterns of ECMC can be classified into Stronger Antagonist Force-Dynamic patterns and Weaker Antagonist Force-Dynamic patterns.The semantic construction of ECMC’s source is closely related to the interaction between semantic components in ECMC.The cognitive rationale for semantic construction of ECMC is attributed to cognitive metaphor.The force interaction relationship presented by five force-dynamic frameworks can basically match with the six semantic categories of ECMC,and the interaction between the two semantic can be presented by these five force-dynamic patterns,therefore,the force-dynamic patterns can effectively construe the force relationship between the Causer(Antagonist)and Causee(Agonist),and clearly present the process of semantic construction of ECMC.