A Corpus-Based Study On The Diachronic Evolution Of English "V+Open" Resultative Construction

English resultative construction is a kind of argument construction with specific syntactic structure and semantic content.Previous researches on English resultative construction basically focus on the synchronic level and pay more attention to the syntactic and semantic characteristics of the whole English resultative construction family,hence lacking support of historical evidence and case studies.However,the study of diachronic dimension has become a new tendency in construction grammar,it is of great reference value to analyze English resultative construction at the diachronic level for its synchronic research.With the evidence from COHA,this thesis focuses on “V+open” two-argument resultatives.Firstly,this study divides the developing periods of “V+open” twoargument resultatives by means of variability-based neighbor clustering.Then,with the facts in productivity,this study explores the diachronic evolution trail of “V+open”two-argument resultatives by applying correspondence analysis and Talmy’s state change event concept framework.The study findings are: 1)“V+open” two-argument resultatives has gone through five stages,which are 1830s-1860 s,1870s-1890 s,1900s-1920 s,1930s-1990 s and 2000 s.As for its general change over time,the result shows that it spread by increasing its frequency of use;2)Productivity of “V+open” twoargument resultatives follows a unstable trend in that the construction keeps attracting new verbs in the first four periods but holds few types in the last period.In spite of that,the potential of the construction to license new types tends to increase;3)Verb classes sanctioned by “V+open” two-argument resultatives grow in size by analogy.Meanwhile,they experience a metonymic elaboration process under Talmy’s state change event concept framework and participate in the semantic structuring of the target construction as the cause,manner,concomitance co-event;4)The semantic change of “V+open” two-argument resultatives between 1830 s and 2000 s is as follows:the means sense is dominant in the 1830s-1860 s and the co-extensiveness between the means sense and the manner sense becomes visible in this period.The combined sense is entrenched and stabilized in the 1870s-1890 s and then strengthened in the 1900s-1920 s.In the 1930s-1990 s,the means sense is further strengthened and the incidentals sense is innovated.In the 2000 s,the manner sense comes to be further entrenched.In the theoretical sense,this study promotes the study of diachronic construction grammar through the diachronic case study of “V+open” two-argument resultatives,and provides ideas for the case study of English resultative construction.In the practical sense,this study offers methodological guidance for further research by combining corpus with quantitative statistical methods.In addition,it is helpful for English learners to master “V+open” two-argument resultatives.