A Cognitive Contrastive Study Of The Diachronic Evolution Of The Ditransitive Constructions In Chinese And English

The ditransitive construction is mainly composed of a verb and three arguments.Its whole meaning is "intended transfer of ownership",and its syntactic form can be encoded as double noun structure,or it can be characterized as preposition-complement construction.With a detailed literature review,we have found that the ditransitive construction achievements in the past few decades have been conducted mainly from the perspective of generative grammar and cognitive semantics,in exploring some regularities of the internal structure,semantic generation and pragmatic extension of the ditransitive construction,which have promoted the development of some grammatical theories.For example,Larson(1988)proposed VP-shell theory based on the inquiry,"which is the foundation and which is derivative",about the relationship between the“preposition construction and the "double object construction".Goldberg(1995)initiated the construction grammar theory based on the exploration and analysis about whether there is an independent abstract construction meaning of the ditransitive construction.However,there are three deficiencies in the previous studies of the ditransitive construction:First comes the lack of description and interpretation of the general diachronic evolution path of the ditransitive constructions;Second,there are few comparative studies on the diachronic evolution characteristics and regularities of the ditransitive constructions in Chinese and English;Third,there is a lack of deep discussion on the reasons behind the similarities and differences of the diachronic evolution characteristics and regularities of the ditransitive constructions between Chinese and English.Therefore,the objective of this study is to apply the comprehensive theoretical framework of grammaticalization-construction grammar-cognitive contrast to the multi-dimensional and multi-level contrast between the systematic processes,evolution characteristics and regularities of the evolution of the ditransitive constructions in Chinese and English,and thus to make a cognitive interpretation of the underlying causes of the similarities and differences of its evolution.This study mainly discusses three questions:(1)What is the general processes of the evolution of the ditransitive constructions in Chinese and English?(2)What are the similarities and differences between the characteristics and regularities of the diachronic evolution of the Chinese and English ditransitive constructions?(3)What are the cognitive motivation and the underlying causes behind the similarities and differences in the diachronic evolution and regularities of the ditransitive constructions in Chinese and English?Through the description and analysis of the characteristics of the diachronic evolution of the Chinese and English ditransitive constructions,a path map of the complete evolution processes of both constructions has been drawn.The Chinese ditransitive construction has gone through the diachronic evolution firstly fro m "S+V+Oi+Od" to "S+Vi+V2+Oi+Od",then to"S+V1+Od+V2+Oi",still then to "S+V1+Od+P+Oi",and finally to"S+P+Oi+V1+Od".In the evolution processes,the grammatical chain from"S+V1+Od+V2+Oi" to "S+V1+Od+P+Oi" belongs to the constructionalization characterized by "new form plus new meaning",for the semantics of "V2" in the "S+V1+Od+V2+Oi" gradually changed into the preposition indicating the meaning of "giving",and the form also evolved from a double object construction similar to a serial verb construction into a preposition-complement construction.And the evolution path from“S+V+Oi+Od”to“S+V1+V2+O1+Od”belongs to preconstructionalization change,because the latter only indicates two synonymous verbs in juxtaposition while the evolution path from“S+V1+Od+P+Oi”into“S+P+Oi+V1+Od”can be a postconstructionalization change because only the form“P+Oi”is moved forward.The English ditransitive construction has firstly evolved from“S+V+Oi+Od”to“S+V1+V2+Oi+Od”,then to“S+V1+Od+V2+Oi”,still then to“S+V1+Od+P+Oi”,and finally to“S+P+Oi+V1+Od”.The evolution chain from“S+V+Oi+Od”to“S+P+V+Oi+Od”belongs to the constructionalization since an independent preposition is added to the form and the meaning of the construction has been extended.The change from“S+P+V+Oi+Od”or“S+V+P+Oi+Od”into“S+V+Od+P+Oi”can be counted as postconstructionalization,for only the word order between the constituents components is rearranged.In short,both the Chinese and English ditransitive constructions have experienced the cyclic evolution from the constructional change to constructionalization and then back to the constructional change again.As to the similarities of and differences between the diachronic evolution regularities of the ditransitive constructions in Chinese and English,we have made a multi-level and multidimensional contrast from the perspectives of phonetics,syntax,semantics,pragmatics,grammaticalization mechanisms and motivations,and have found that the major commonalities include:(1)The types of word order with high usage frequency tend to be the same:in the construction of both languages,the SVOiOd is of the highest frequency;(2)The three subclasses of the ditransitive constructions in Chinese and English displaying the same hierarchy in schematicity,productivity and compositionality:“give" class>"get" class>"move" class;(3)Because society and language are in constant change,which leads to the generalization of the semantics of the ditransitive constructions in Chinese and English,the semantic and pragmatic function of the construction of both languages has been extended from the expression of "concrete giving" to "the giving of abstract emotion or concept".The differences mainly lie in:(1)in the phonetic aspect,due to "the bisyllablization trend" both the the verbs and auxiliary words in the Chinese ditransitive constructions have undergone bisyllablization and polysyllablization,whereas in the English ditransitive constructions only the vowel of the verb in a sentence is prolonged.(2)In the word order aspect,there has occurred an alternative word order selection between“fewer or more types" in the Chinese ditransitive constructions.But the word order of the English ditransitive constructions has undergone an innovative evolution of word order characterized by the rearrangement of the construction constituents.(3)in the Semantic and pragmatic aspects,the matching mode of the form and the meaning of the Chinese double noun construction is "one form,two antonymous meanings”.But that of the form and the meaning of the English double noun construction strictly adheres to“one form,one meaning".(4)In the evolution mechanism and motivation,the main evolution mechanism of Chinese ditransitive constructions is analogy,and its motivation is "double-syllable trend",while the main evolution mechanism of English ditransitive constructions is conceptual metonymy and its motivation is "the demise of the inflectional marking system".As to the underlying causes of the similarities of and differences between Chinese and English ditransitive constructions,we find that they mainly exist at three levels:First comes the spatial nature of the Chinese double noun construction and the temporal nature of the English double noun construction at the language level,and the second is that,at the cognitive level,the Chinese nation often use the conceptualization of the superposition in the integrated interpretation of the ditransitive events from the perspective of summary scanning,while the British people prefers to using a sequential,one-by-one approach to conceptualization in decoding the ditransitive events from the perspective of sequence scanning.Third,at the philosophical level,in the course of time,the Chinese nation gradually formed the philosophy of"combining two into one" and the spirit of "giving and getting" which marks the essence of the traditional Chinese cultural spirit,while the British people formed the dialectical thinking mode of "one splitting into two" and the analytical spirit of getting to the root of the matter.This study has deepened and expanded the research on ditransitive constructions in Chinese and English,made up for the deficiency of the research on the mutual verification of the form and meaning of the Chinese and English ditransitive constructions,revealed the correlation between language change,human cognition evolution and the spirit of the nation's traditional culture,and proposed a new perspective for the cross-language contrastive study on Chinese and English ditransitive constructions.It is also hoped that the results of this research can be useful to English,translation and foreign language teaching and other professional classroom teaching,providing language learners with some theoretical reference and living examples to draw lesson on in sentence pattern,sentence structure and other aspects of learning and application practice.