A Study On Chinese Patient-Topic Construction

This study, based on the Integrated Approach of Construction Grammar, is concerned with the Chinese Patient-Topic Construction (CPTC, for short). The study mainly describes its form and function, probes into the various motivations for support of its independent status, the formation mechanism and the diachronic factors relevant to its synchronic behavior, and exhibits its typological values.The CPTC is usually called the Patient-Subject Construction (PSC, for short) in the domestic linguistic circle. In a narrow sense, this PSC is defined as the one that its patient functions as subject and there are no agent and passive markers. It is instantiated by the two sentences "the vase broke" and "keng wa qian le"(literally translated as "the hole dug shallow", meaning that "the hole was dug, but it was too shallow"). I review the previous researches from the perspectives of structuralism, generative grammar, Cognitive Linguistics and grammaticalization, and find the following possible problems. The scholars have the five different opinions of the true nature of the PSC, that is, it is viewed as the passive sentence, the stative sentence, the topical sentence, the middle sentence and the ergative sentence. They do not reach a consensus on whether it is a basic construction. They have the different views on the reason why the patient is positioned in the initial position of the PSC and the complex predicate in the final position. They argue that the PSC has its independent status, but cannot provide sufficient evidence. The current study, on the basis of the review of Construction Grammar’s basic features, major challenges and latest trends, puts forward the Integrated Approach of Construction Grammar. This approach has a better connection between the form and the function, the superordinate construction and the verb, usage-based theory and constructional holism, synchrony and diachrony, Chinese and English contrastive analysis. It incorporates the ontological research and methodology with itself, and can have a better descriptive and explanatory power on the above-mentioned linguistic phenomenon.This study argues that the patient in the sentence-initial position can be better referred as a topic. The three reasons are as follows. First, the component has a similar feature with the topic. The topic has a given information and definite reference. The subject is not confined to the two aspects. Topic, as a discourse notion, usually has continuality. The subject, as a clause-level notion, usually does not have such feature. Second, the combination of this component and complex predicate usually expresses non-dynamism, which is similar to the function of the topic-comment relation, whereas the subject-predicate relation is not limited to this. Third, this patient usually occurs at the sentence-initial position, but this is not true of the subject. Therefore, the object of this study is defined as the CPTC.The CPTC can be defined as a form-function pairing that its patient functions as a sentence-initial topic and the complex predicate functions as a comment and there are no agent and passive markers. The pairing can be summarized as: [NP/patient/topic]+[complex predicate]/comment], whose typical constructional meaning is "the comment describes or evaluates the result and state of the topical patient entity".The major views of the study are as follows. It posits that the CPTC is a "non-dynamic" construction. The CPTC is different from the passive construction, the "ba" construction, and the double-subject construction. It is originally derived from the mono-transitive construction. With a gradual extension, it becomes a common construction with much more conventionalization and productivity. The existence of this construction can be substantiated by the conceptual schema, corpus-based frequency statistics and constructional distribution. That the patient functions as a topic and the complex predicate functions as a comment can be better explained in terms of the interaction among the semantic, pragmatic, cognitive and syntactic levels. The agent is not profiled, and becomes implicit in syntax. The complex predicate functions as a new information, with higher semantic sufficiency and cognitive prominence. Therefore, this predicate needs to appear in the sentential-final focal position. Owing to the fact that the pre-verbal position is slack and the post-verbal position is tight in Chinese construction, the patient, currently occurring in the sentential-final focal position, should be promoted to the sentential-initial position and functions as a topic. The diachronic survey shows that the considerable increase of the construction is relatively associated with the verb-complement structures, etc. The superiority of Chinese constructions over the English counterpart in number and type is related to the Chinese topic-prominent and pragmatics-dominant typological features. These typological features are clearly shown in the CPTC.This research selects the following three subordinate constructions as case studies, that is, the "NPpatient+VA+le" Construction, the "NPpatient+V+bude" Construction, and the "NPpatienti+V+NPpatient2" Construction. The first subordinate construction is exemplified by the three sentences, "fancai bai qi le " (literally translated as "the meal put ready", meaning that "the meal is put ready"), "yifu xi xiao le "(literally translated as "the clothes washed small", meaning that "the clothes were washed too small")and "maoyi zhi da le " (literally translated as "the sweater knitted large", meaning that "the sweater was knitted too large"). The major findings are as follows. The construction can be sub-divided into the result-description type and the result-evaluation one. These two constructions are homonymic. From the perspectives of conceptual schema, token and type frequency, and constructional distribution, I can provide the cognitive, semantic and pragmatic evidence for their independence, and prove that the former construction is typical and the latter one is less typical. The corpus survey shows that (1) the activity verbs outnumber the result-implied verbs in the construction. (2) The common verbs have a better capacity than less common verbs to combine with the adjectival complements. (3) With regard to the adjectival complements, the token and type frequency of the closed-scale gradable adjectives and non-gradable ones outnumber those of open-scale gradable ones. The verb-adjective pairings which denote the objective correlation outnumber those which express the subjective correlation. The formation mechanism incorporates the semantic, pragmatic, syntactic and cognitive levels. The diachronic case study, based on the verb "da(to hit)" in Chinese constructions, shows that the patient occurring in the sentence-initial position is relatively associated with the high frequency of the verb-complement structures, and closely related with the increase of the complexity of the complements. The number and type of the CPTC is superior to the English counterpart.The second subordinate construction is instantiated by the two sentences, "toulai de luogu qiao bude " (literally translated as "the stolen gong and drum beat should not", meaning that "the stolen gong and drum should not be beaten") and "jichu chanye xueruo bude " (literally translated as "the basic industry neglected should not", meaning that "the basic industry should not be neglected"). The main findings are as follows. First, owing to the innate quality or value of different entities of the patient, the negative or positive semantics of the patient entities should be coordinated with the semantics of the complex predicate. The "advisory" meaning of the construction can be fully described like this:owing to the innate quality or value of a given entity, the speaker advises the hearer not to do something wrong. Second, the construction is an independent and common one, which is proven by the evidence from conceptual schema, token and type frequency, and constructional distribution. Third, the implicit agent and the semantic, pragmatic and cognitive features of the predicate "V+ bude" give rise to the phenomenon that the patient should appear in the sentence-initial position. Fourth, the diachronic survey exhibits that the constructional meanings of the subordinate constructions "V+ bude" are diachronically related. Fifth, the contrastive analysis between Chinese and English shows that the different voices are selected, and the syntactic devices denoting the "advisory" meaning also differ.The third subordinate construction is instantiated by the three sentences, "juzi bo le pi" (literally translated as "the orange peeled the skin", meaning that "the skin of the orange is peeled"), "chengbao gongzhan le sanzuo " (literally translated as "the castle conquered three", meaning that "the three castles were conquered") and "Lisi dapo le tou " (literally translated as "Lisi hurt head", meaning that "Lisi’s head was hurt"). There are the following major findings. The relation between the entity of the patient and the resultative nouns and the number-classifier phrase is a part-whole one. This kind of construction falls into two types:the resultative noun and the number-classifier phrase. The latter can be subdivided into three types. The conceptual schema, constructional distribution of the construction proves that this construction and the mono-transitive construction are complementary. Therefore, the former has an independent status. The implicit agent and the semantic, pragmatic and cognitive features of the complex predicate contribute to the phenomenon that the patient should occur in the sentence-initial position.The main innovations of this study are summarized as follows. The CPTC is a "non-dynamic" construction, originally derived from the mono-transitive construction. With a gradual extension, it becomes a common construction and has its independent status. The formation mechanism of this construction should be better explained with more linguistic interfaces. This study shows that the CPTC has its own domain in Chinese construction with some similarities and dissimilarities with other constructions. Therefore, the study of the CPTC makes greater contributions to the relevant fields, such as the research of other constructions in Chinese and the building of the whole network system of Chinese construction itself. The Integrated Approach of Construction Grammar has more advantages concerning linguistic description and explanation, and methodology innovation. This approach sets up a close relation between the ontological study and research methodology, placing more emphasis over the five interactions and showing some proactiveness in methodology.