Argument Realizations Of English And Chinese Resultative Constructions

Resultatives are ubiquitous in Chinese to the extent that almost all monosyllabic verbs denoting actions could constitute resultatives in combination with complements designating state or property filled by other monosyllabic verbs. They are characterized with high productivity, wide distribution, great diversity in syntax and extreme complexity in semantics. Similarly, resultatives in English are composed of verbs denoting action and complements filled by adjectives or preposition phrases designating state, and they also exhibit certain degree of diversity in syntax and semantics as one of the common sentence patterns in English. Resultatives are form and meaning pairings in both languages, presenting principled correspondences between variations in semantic predication, differences in aspectual properties and discrepancies in syntactic structure. My review work shows that componential theories about head feature percolation fail to provide adequate accounts for the given phenomenon, analyses from the approach of lexical semantics are even worse because of lack of enough generalization any serious grammatical theory deserves, and conceptual structure suffers as well by focusing on the generalized conceptual structures and leaving verbs out of account. Construction grammar has the edge over other mainstream linguistic theories by regarding language as form and meaning constellations and fits in with the phenomenon under investigation perfectly. By adopting construction grammar as the theoretical framework, the argument structure analysis as the research tool, and usage-based approach for data collection, this thesis presents a full account for the distributions and syntactic and semantic properties of English and Chinese resultatives, elaborates on their commonalities and individualities, expounds the different mechanisms for their argument realizations and explores the ultimate motivations behind their discrepancies from the perspective of construction formation.Resultatives are a set of interrelated constructions concerning causalities with subtleties, and they can be uniformly presented as CAUSE-BECOME since the meaning they convey can be generalized as 'one entity undergoes a change of state as a result of an action'. The entity that undergoes change, the action that brings about the change and the result of change are three essential elements for resultatives. English resultatives comprise a family of three constructions corresponding to three causal relations; Chinese resultatives consist of five constructions portraying five causal relations. The wide distribution of Chinese resultatives is further corroborated by the fact that some constructions among them can constitute distinct constructions in combination with three sentence patterns whose information structures are marked—Ba construction, verb copying construction and Bei construction.That English and Chinese resultatives license different constructions is relevant to the different mechanisms they employ for argument realizations. In view of construction grammar, argument structure is determined by construction and argument is realized via the interaction between the argument licensed by the construction and the semantic role assigned by the verb in V position. English resultative constructions involve two mechanisms for argument realization by following principle of semantic coherence: fusion when the two semantically compatible roles integrate and sole contribution when construction is the sole supplier to an argument. Besides the above two, Chinese resultative constructions recruit a third mechanism: unification when two semantically incoherent roles integrate. The argument realization principle that Chinese resultatives follow is comparatively loose, under which the realization of patient is not constrained by semantic coherence principle. Two arguments are attested in the argument structures of English resultative constructions: AGENT that emits energy and patient that undergoes change of state; in Chinese resultatives, one more argument is detected: THEME that is directly acted upon by action.English and Chinese resultative constructions are characterized with their own idiosyncrasies in syntax, semantics, distributions, argument realizations and etc. Besides the type and number of constructions they are classified, different causalities they describe, different argument realization mechanisms they employ and argument realization principles they follow, they also exhibit discrepancies in aspectual properties. There is no time interval between action event and result event for English resultaitves, while temporal delay is available with Chinese resultatives. The discrepancies mentioned parallel the syntactic arrangements of V and Obj in resultatives in the two languages: in English resultatives, V and Object are adjacent and in Chinese, they are intervened by Comp in between.The ultimate reason that Chinese resultatives exceed English ones in diversity and complexity lies in the separation of theme from patient, and owing to the fact that argument is realized via the interaction between construction and verb, the separation of the two arguments in argument structures must rest with the independence of the corresponding two semantic roles, that is, rests with the type of verbs that enter V position of constructions. Verbs allowed in English resultatives include accomplishment verbs which are obligatorily transitive assigning both agent and patient, therefore patient comprises double connotations of undergoing action and undergoing change which makes it inseparable; whereas verbs of such type are never allowed in Chinese resultatives. Results from a cross-language study on German resultatives and a diachronic study on Chinese resultatives made by other scholars confirm the link between verb type and the formation of resultative constructions.As an important subtype, the argument realizations and distributions of reflexive resultatives are subject to the argument realization mechanisms and distribution constraints for resultatives in their respective languages. Reflexive resultatives serve as an indispensable part for the full account of resultatives and at the same time, with the typicality in their discrepancies, they lend support to my conclusion in a clearer way. In addition, the role that metonymy plays as a cognitive process in the formation and interpretation of certain constructions has been studied and validated in this thesis.English resultatives and Chinese resultatives are products of interactive work among the same physical phenomenon, distinct cognitive styles and different language systems, which can be fully accounted under the unified framework of construction grammar.