A Study On The Semantic Orientation Of Complement In Verb-resultative Construction

Guided by the theory of Semantic Grammar, and aiming at solving the difficulty of Computers' understanding on Chinese verb-resultative constructions, this paper analyses the semantic orientation of resultative complement in mandarin verb-resultative constructions from the angles of resultative's object, direction, amount and scope, which are based on the methodologies of structuralism linguistics, corpus linguistics and prototype theory in cognitive linguistics. And meanwhile, the paper explains the relevant syntax phenomenon and rules of verb-resultative semantic orientation with syntax iconicity theory and Figure-ground theory. At last, this paper has devised a procedure for computer to recognize resultative's orientation.This paper contains 7 chapters. Apart from the Introduction and Conclusion, there are 5 chapters.Chapter 2:Study on the statistical measurement of resultative words. Based on the current studies, this paper found out the core semantic features [+feasible] [+controllable] of the words, and put forward the syntax patterns. And it also pointed out that the capability of the words which can be used as resultative is different, and restricted with the factors as its syllable, using frequency, the degree of independence, and the collocation with verb etc. Moreover, this chapter counted all the resultative adjectives in Mandarin dictionary(5th edition) and collected the resultative verbs as many as possible.Chapter 3:the Object of the Resultative complement. Guided by the semantic theory of two-way choice, this chapter emphasized on the argument structure analysis on the noun-object of resultative complement with the prototype theory and the features of verb-object, which pointed that the object of resultative complement can be divided into two types:the human beings or things and the behaviors, and the first one's prototype is object argument, and the other is behavior itself. Whereas, the object of the resultative complement is determined by its semantic features.Chapter 4:the object of resultative complement and verb-resulative's syntactical pattern's distribution. This chapter described the different verb-resultative's syntactical pattern's distribution, found out and explained its rules, at the same time, counted their distribution in the authentic corpus so as to test and verify the illation. All the resultatives orientated to human beings and things can be formed as "ba(?) "zi sentence, and "ba(?)"zi sentence is the touchstone to judge the resultative's orientation to human beings and things. It is up to the factors of verb-resultative's pragmatic meaning, the distance between the reason and result event and the valence of the predicate verb to judge whether the verb-resultative constructions can be formed verb-copy sentences. The resultative complements as animate transitive verbs are not fulfilled with the common rules. And it is complementary in topic sentences and "bei(?)" zi sentenses of the verb-resultative constructions distribution whose resultative complements are orientated to the behaviors, which is effected by the valence of the predicate verb.Chapter 5:The direction, amount and scope of resultative complement. This chapter considered that the orientation of resultative complement can be considered from different angles, and concluded rules from these angles and explain them from cognitive grammar. If the angles of the orientation are different, the restraining factors are different. According to the effort of the restraining factors, this chapter presents a rule on the judgement of resultative complement's semantic orientation. In the verb-resultative constructions oriented to human and things, the resultative complement is prior to orient the noun phrases in the natural order sentences; and in the "ba (?) "zi sentences, is prior to orient the objective of "ba (?) "; wheras in unmarked sentences, oriented to noun phrases as subjective. However, the direction of the resultative complement's orientation is related to the sentence patterns the verb-resultative construction located in. Moreover, the object of the resultative complementary is effected by the principle of semantic consistency, and the direction is effected by the principles of distance iconicity and prominent.Chapter 6:Based on the rules put forward in chapter 5, this chapter has devised a procedure for computer to recognize the orientation.