A Study Of English "V+Through" Fictive Motion Construction

Fictive Motion expression does not occur in the real world.It expresses the motion or orientation in mental space.For example The mountain range goes from Mexico to Canada.In this sentence,the speaker’s perception of the direction of the mountain forms a path of Fictive Motion Construction,and the non-movable Figure can be modified by the motion verb go.Therefore,the semantic elements of this phenomenon and its cognitive mechanism are worth exploring.However,it is not easy to retrieve examples of Fictive Motion Construction from large corpora,so the previous studies mostly lack quantitative statistical data support.Firstly,this thesis provides a new perspective of corpus selection to have sufficient data support.That is,starting from the English preposition “through”,this paper searches and screens all the possible examples of “V + Through” Fictive Motion Construction through COCA corpus.Then,based on Goldberg’s Construction Grammar and Talmy’s typology of motion events,this thesis hopes to comprehensively analyze the characteristics of each element in the Fictive Motion Construction and the cognitive mechanism of it.This study raises the following three research questions.(1)What are the classification and distribution of English “V + Through” Fictive Motion Construction?(2)What are the components’ characteristics of English “V+ Through” Fictive Motion Construction?(3)What is the cognitive mechanism of English “V+ Through” Fictive Motion Construction?In order to answer the above research questions,this study selects the top 20 verbs with the highest frequency in the English “V+ Through” Fictive Motion Construction,totaling 3,021 sentences.First,the corpus is classified by quantitative and qualitative methods.Then,different path schemas of “V+ Through” Fictive Motion Construction are examined,and the characteristics of the Figure are also summarized.Finally,the cognitive mechanism of “V+ Through” Fictive Motion Construction is analyzed.The following three findings are obtained.(1)It is found that the “V + Through” Fictive Motion Construction can be classified into five categories.Among them,the “V + Through” Emanation Paths Fictive Motion Construction has the highest frequency(84%),followed by the “V +Through” Coextension Paths Fictive Motion Construction(15%),the “V + Through”Access Paths,Advent Paths and Pattern Paths Fictive Motion Construction,account for1%.We do not find the Frame-Relative Fictive Motion Construction.(2)The path information represented by the preposition “through” in the English“V + Through” Fictive Motion Construction falls into three schemas: PATH 1 shows that the Figure and the Ground form a linear crossing relationship;PATH 2 shows that the Figure always moves linearly within the Ground;PATH 3 shows that the Figure always moves disordered and diffused within the Ground.Verbs appearing in English“V + Through” Fictive Motion Construction are divided into nine categories,among which motion verbs have the highest frequency(43%),followed by Verbs of cutting(15%),Verbs of emission(12%),Verbs of removing(10%),Weather verbs(9%),Verbs of Separating and Disassembling(7%),and Verbs of appearance(2%).Verbs of exerting force and Copula account for only 1% each.Finally,the characteristics of the Figure of this construction are as follows: [-life] [-motion] [+ coherence] and [+ linear extensibility] [+ disordered diffusion].The Figure conforming to the semantic characteristics of [+ rectangular extensibility] has not been found.(3)For the motion verbs that occur most frequently in the “V + Through” Fictive Motion Construction,it is the metaphor that plays a role: as a result of the metaphor,the movement of intangible or invisible Figures such as sound,sight,and smell(which cannot move themselves)is projected to different fields such as psychology and sense,thus generating “Fictive Motion” for these entities.In addition,since the Figure of Fictive Motion Construction cannot make the real movement,some motion verbs do not express the actual movement of the Figure in the sentence but express the information about the path.So,there is a metonymy that is “Motion for Path”.Next,for some non-motion verbs,this is the result of coercion: first,the construction coerces the vocabulary,making the Figures and verbs have the spatial relation meaning;second,verbs and Figures adapt their own semantics to highlight only their path information,giving static spatial relations the meaning of motion,thus generating dynamic interpretation.This paper has the following significance: firstly,the combination of motion events and construction grammar is helpful to have a clearer understanding of English Fictive Motion Construction and its generation process.Secondly,the data-based research makes the results more convincing,and also provides methodological references for more researches on motion events.Thirdly,this study also contributes to the learning and teaching of Fictive Motion Construction.