Research On The Conceptual Integration Of Clause-As-Complement Sentences

This paper studies clause-as-complement sentences in Modern Chinese, with the theoretical background of cognitive linguistics and conceptual integration, etc., to state its integration characteristics basing on sufficient amount of statistics on natural corpus.In the first place, considering the previous research and observations of corpus, I suggest that a clause-as-complement sentence is integrated by two events. The integrated one ((NP₁) +VP₁+de(å¾—)+NP₂+VP₂) is a sentence pattern with an independent meaning, which represents the first event ((NP₁) +VP₁) bring an negative effect to the second event (NP₂+VP₂) . Such kind of casual relation is created by the whole sentence structure; and the 'negative effect' is a typical semantic character after integration according to the statistical data of corpus.Moreover, based on the stated meaning of the sentence pattern after integration, I divide the clause-as-complement sentences into two classes: the type of internally casual relation and the type of externally casual relation. The internally casual relation means that the performers of actions in the first and the second events are same, i.e., the internal performer himself/herself brings about the result represented by the second event. From the semantic aspect, in the internally casual type the relation between the subjects of two clauses (NP₁,NP₂)is whole-part. The externally casual relation indicates that there are different performers of action in the two clauses after integration; the performer of the first event representing reasons is exterior to the second event representing results. And there is no necessarily semantic connection between NP₁ and NP₂ in such a type.Third, considering its semantic and formal characters before and after integration, I propose that the ways of integration of clause-as-complement sentences fall into two categories: a directly combining mode and a truncatedly combining mode. A directly combining mode is defined as: the components of the clauses represented by the first and the second events undergo no deletion, and only 'de'("å¾—") is added to the integrated form; and a truncatedly combining mode is defined as: some components are truncated due to the syntactic requirements in the process of integration, in other words, NP₂ or NP₁ is deleted. Two kinds of modes are distinguished by semantic relation and the phonetic pause of the whole sentence pattern. From the semantic classification perspective, we can use both integration modes to either the type of internally casual relation or the type of externally casual relation, but different concrete features are shown.Forth, I proposed an integration grade standard of clause-as-complement sentences based on the various integration modes. Unlike the integration grade standard of words, the meaning of clause-as-complement sentences after integration can be summarized as 'casual relation', so I take forms to determine such a grade standard. Generally speaking, the directly combining mode results in a lower integration grade than the truncatedly combining mode. Due to the differences of details on the integration of complement in both the type of internally casual relation and the type of externally casual relation, there are various integration grades inside the sub-classes.Fifth, drudging from the results, the process of integration has created lots of syntactic influences, which are shown as: integration brings about semantic diversity of NP₁,NP₂,VP₁,VP₂; integration also results in the syntactic degradation of VP₁ and the salience of VP₂, and VP₁ shows constrains in its meaning, part of speech and syllable, whereas VP₂ becomes the focus of the complement; integration can turn the independent clauses to phrases, accompanied by the rhythmic change of the clause.Finally, ambiguity of clause-as-complement sentences is discussed. I analyze the causes of the formation of ambiguity mainly from the aspects of meaning and integration grades, and try to eliminate ambiguity by virtue of the meaning of sentence pattern.