A Comparative Study Of The Causative Category Between Chinese And Japanese

Causative category,a semantic and grammatical relational category of human languages in common,is an important project in linguistic research.On the basis of seeking the criteria for judging the causative category of human languages and establishing the causative semantic system,this dissertation mads a full description and comparative analysis of the semantic and syntactic structures of causative categories in Chinese and Japanese.Adopting the methods of both qualitative and quantitative research and in the light of the findings in typology and cognitive linguistics,this dissertation focuses on the interpretation of the analysis conclusions from the aspects of cognitive semantics and pragmatic motivation,and has obtained more reliable research conclusions.The dissertation falls into eight chapters.In the first chapter,by reviewing the literatures of Causative Category in Chinese and Japanese,we found that the previous research findings of Causative Category in Chinese and Japanese were relatively rich.Most of them adopted the analytical model guided by traditional structural linguistics theory,but the following aspects were neglected and need further studies.First,there is a lack of awareness of systematically examining causation as a whole in terms of syntax and semantics.Second,there are not many achievements in exploring the essence of causative category under newer theoretical framework.Thirdly,the achievements of scientific explanations on the generation mechanism and restrictive factors of "causative" are still insufficient.Fourthly,systematic comparative studies of causative category in different languages are rare.On this basis and guided by proper theory,we established the content,approach and methods in this research.In the second chapter,after an elaboration on the cognitive view and the theory of categorization in linguistic research,focusing on the extension and connotation of causative category,we developed the main image schema,semantic structure and definition of causative concept.Causative is a category of semantic relations,which originates from the driving schema of cognitive category.It usually has four basic semantic parameters(causer,causative force,cause andcausative result),describing and expressing an entity(or event)acting on another entity or by means of tools,which causes the entity to change(including the generation of behavior or state).The third chapter describes the specific forms and characteristics of causative category in Chinese and Japanese respectively.On this basis,we discover some overall phenomena and characteristics of their respective categories,and thus reveal some linguistic rules behind them.First,in the form of expression,the causative category in Chinese has analytical and lexical causative structures.Among them,the analytic type leads to well-developed structure and rich forms,covering a variety of sentence patterns.Japanese causative categories have analytical,morphological and lexical causative structures,which are of various types and have different emphasis.Secondly,in terms of frequency of use,the analytic type of causative category in Chinese leads to the high frequency of structural use,while the corresponding lexical type leads to the low frequency of structural use.The morphological type of causative category in Japanese leads to the high frequency of structural use,while the corresponding analytical and lexical types lead to the low frequency of structural use.Thirdly,there are some corresponding causative frameworks in the causative category of Chinese and Japanese.The types of causative frameworks in Chinese causative category are richer than those in Japanese.Fourthly,from the perspective of the degree of closeness and combination among the structures within the causative category,the degree of closeness among the structures within the causative category in Chinese is not as close as that in Japanese,which mainly depends on the combinatin of semantics and word order.The combination among the structures in Japanese is relatively close,and the combination mode is mainly restricted by grammatical rules besides semantics.Chapter 4 investigates and analyses the corresponding distribution of causative categories in Chinese and Japanese from the dimensions of semantics and morphology,and draws important conclusions.From the perspective of semantics,firstly,the meaning of "causative" is the most widely and evenly distributed in Chinese and Japanese compared with the meaning of "imperative" and"permissive".Secondly,from the perspective of "imperative"" meaning,the formation mechanism of Chinese is mainly restricted by ZV lexical meaning and syntactic construction,while Japanese is often restricted by pragmatic factors such as causative force,interpersonal relationship and benefit consciousness.They are obviously different..Thirdly,from the perspective of "permissible" meaning,Chinese and Japanese often have fixed formats and expressions,but the use of permissible meaning in Japanese is more frequent than that in Chinese.From the morphological point of view,firstly,the corresponding distribution of Chinese analytic form and Japanese form shows their own characteristics on the whole.The Imperative form in the small category completely corresponds to Japanese,and the Marked form of the word "de" completely does not correspond to each other,which is due to the differences in cognitive understanding and language generation mechanism between the two countries.The correspondence of the other subclasses is related to the nature of YV and the speaker's viewpoint.Secondly,in lexical causative construction of Chinese,the transformation of Zero-marked form to Japanese is richer than that of Compound form.In Chapter 5,with the help of nine semantic parameters summarized by typologist Dixon,we put them into three sub-categories of causative category,including direct and indirect causative,conscious causative and unconscious causative,positive causative and negative causative,and carefully examine their choices and constraints on the generation mechanism of causative category in Chinese and Japanese.Chapter 6 chooses three important related factors in cognitive linguistics and causative category as the entry point,analyses their influence and restriction on the generation mechanism of various structural modes of causative category in Chinese and Japanese,and draws important conclusions:Firstly,there are great differences in scanning mode between Chinese and Japanese causative categories.Chinese analytical type relies on sequential scanning,while lexical type relies on summary scanning.Japanese is mainly a summary scanning mode.Secondly,benefiting consciousness plays an implicit role in the generation mechanism of causative category in Chinese,while the Japanese causative category plays an overall and explicit role.Thirdly,the construing strategy in Chinese is objective,so that within the category,the viewpoint basically always lies in the causer,which is not restricted by the speaker's "I" feelings or preferences.Japanese is a typical way of subjective construing strategy,which results in the influence and restriction of the "first person closeness" of the "perspectives" on categorical language coding.Based on a quantitative study of 36 Japanese original works in the Chinese-Japanese translation corpus,we have obtained six regulatory mechanisms of"perspectives" factor for language coding under asymmetric conditions.Chapter 7 summarizes the main achievements,characteristics and shortcomings of this study,and analyses the subjects to be further studied.The main innovations of this dissertation are as follows:Firstly,on the basis of the previous comparative research achievements between Chinese and Japanese,the dissertation tries to integrate the local and stand at a higher and more macro point of view,focusing on the whole semantic category of causation.Emphasizing the method of combining semantics from semantics to form,form to semantics,this dessertation describes and analyses the structure,form and semantic relationship of the whole system of causative category between Chinese and Japanese.Secondly,the traditional qualitative and quantitative research method are adopted in this research.Thirdly,this dissertation absorbs the reasonable and scientific parts of the newer theories of cognitive linguistics and typology as guidance,which not only reflects the progress of the research,but also obtains many innovative conclusions in essence.Fourthly,the study not only focuses on static description,but also focuses on the motivation explanation from the semantic,cognitive and cultural perspectives behind it.The conclusions are true and reliable,can be directly applied to the research and teaching of related fields in the future.