A Study On The Construction Of Intransitive Verbs Taking A Theme Object

Under the guidance of three-dimensional grammar theory, having absorbed the sound aspects in contemporary foreign grammar theory, this dissertation comprehensively and systematically discusses the characteristics of syntax, semantics and pragmatics of the construction of intransitive verbs taking a theme object. Intransitive verbs (such as zuo, lai, si, xia and hong, etc) followed by theme objects normally constitutes existential constructions and so-called "the construction with a possessor subject and a possessee object". Most former researchers examined these two constructions in a respective way. This dissertation, starting with the view of continuum, argues that these two constructions essentially are "largely identical but with minor differences", sharing the common feature that intransitive verbs can't take objects in theme subjects construction, while in this construction, a theme object is taken, and the anterior element of verbs has no direct semantic relevance with the verb, but has broad possession relationships with those posterior elements of the verb . Generally speaking, from "zuo" type verbs to "lai" type verbs to "si" type verbs and to "xia, hong" type verbs, in the theme objects construction(NP2+Vi+NP2) they make up,the compactness between NP1 and NP2,the giveness of NP2, the topic continuity of NP2 and the intensity of being affected of the all clauses form a gradually transitional continuum, furthermore, these aspects are correlated with each other and at the same time, restrictive to each other.The whole dissertation is composed of four chapters, added the preface and conclusion parts.The preface part mainly introduces the research scope, theoretical frame, research purpose, resources and denotations used in this dissertation.The first chapter makes an overall review of the studies done in the field concerned, and briefly points out problems existing.The second chapter initially describes the components of the construction of intransitive verbs taking a theme object, by using the reference of prototypical theory, analyzes the syntactic attributives of NP1 and NP2; then after examining the distribution of intransitive verbs taking a theme object, it points out that intransitive verbs taking a theme object most often appear at the location of the first clause orconsequent clause of a sentence, but seldom functions as the end clause or of a sentence independent sentence( odds of both the two cases are about 10%). This distribution state shows that mainly plays as background clauses in sections and chapters.Absorbed the sound aspects in Construction Grammar and James Huang's light verb theory, the third chapter surveys semantics theme object's constructional meaning again, classified traditional so called existential construction, appear or disappear construction, the construction with a possessor subject and a possessee object into two (1) "existential construction", which expresses there be something in somewhere with some state;(2) "happen construction", which express "what happened to somebody or something in somewhere or sometime". Regards in semantics construction of these two classes clauses has a light verb which stay at coreposition[-EXIST]/[HAPPEN] , and endow the object following the verb semanticrole as the "theme", while NP1 is the most direct relative to the phenomenon of "existence" or "happen."The first section of the forth chapter bring forward "the givenness hierarchy" (classified into four broad levels and seven branch classes) and analyzes NP2's definiteness posterior to different verbs, followed the discovery that from "zuo" to "lai" to "si" and to "xia, hong" type verbs, posterior to which, NP2's givenness shapes a continuum gradually transiting from low level to higher level: 80% of NP2 after the verb "zuo" center at the lowest level of "the givenness hierarchy": "F type, the restrictive attribute offers information with certain givenness" and "G type, basically carries no information with any givenness"; 79.3% of NP2 after the verb "lai" locate at the seco...