A Diachronic Construction Grammar Approach To The Evolution Of “Guoqu” In Modern Chinese

Directional complements remain a significantly important segment of Chinese grammar,which gain wide attention in the field of Chinese Linguistics.Previous studies are mainly conducted synchronically from primarily three perspectives:a.the ordering of syntactic elements in sentence patterns containing directional complements;b.the extended meanings of directional complements;c.the survey of the acquisition of directional complements by foreign Chinese learners.From the Diachronic Construction Grammar approach,this thesis inspects the evolution of the meanings and forms of“guoqu(过去)”both as a directional verb and a directional complement through the retrieval of data from the CCL corpus,and attempts to map out the constructional network of“guoqu(过去)”.The thesis integrates synchronic and diachronic studies for that purpose.The research questions of this thesis are proposed as follows:a.How do the lexical and grammatical constructions related to“guoqu(过去)”evolve?b.What features are exhibited in the lexical and grammatical constructionalization of“guoqu(过去)”?c.What mechanisms are behind the constructionalization and constructional change of“guoqu(过去)”?Incorporating qualitative and quantitative analysis,the study arrives at the following major findings:a.the lexical construction“guoqu(过去)”both as a noun and a verb is created through two stages of lexical construction,in which these two lexical schemas of Compounding schema and the Conversion schema are concerned.The verb construction“guoqu(过去)”evolves multiple extended meanings in post-constructionalization constructional change.The verb construction subsequently experiences three stages of grammatical constructionalization and three post-constructionalization constructional changes(as illustrated in Table 4.1 and Table4.2),giving rise to the production of multiple schematic constructions and became more grammatical,including V+guoqu(过去)+o>o+guoqu(过去)/guoqu(过去)+o>V/A+zhe(着)+guoqu>V+o+guoqu(过去)>V+le(了)+guoqu(过去)>V+jiang(将)+guoqu(过去)>V+de(得)+guoqu(过去)>V+bu(不)+guoqu>V+guo(过)+o+qu(去)>V+guoqu(过去)(“o”,“V”and“A”represents“object”,“verb”and“adjective”separately;“>”stands for“evolves from”).b.Both lexical constructionalization and grammatical constructionalization display the following dynamic features:increased productivity and schematicity as well as decreased compositionality.c.The mechanisms driving the constructionalization and post-constructionalization constructional change of“guoqu(过去)”are principally neoanalysis,analogization,conceptual metaphor and constructional coercion.This research is both theoretically and practically valuable.Firstly,Diachronic Construction Grammar is a fledgling discipline and holds a relatively small depository of literature which is most often confined to English data.This thesis can be perceived as a successful case study of language change under the framework of Diachronic Construction Grammar based on Chinese data.Moreover,the study can also provide references for the diachronic research of other directional complements.Secondly,the research result can be applied to Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language,such as offering feasible suggestions for the compiling order of different usages of the directional complements in the textbook.