| Resultative constructions encode causative meaning and are typologically universal.However,formal variations do exist amongst them cross-linguistically and even within one single language.Resultative construction in Modern Chinese is typically represented in the form of complex predicate[V R],which is the major focus of this dissertation.It has been an enduring“old”topic in research on Chinese language,and an enormous number of achievements have been gained on this topic.Nevertheless,there are still not inconsiderable issues and controversies concerning it.These issues and controversies directly result from attempts to derive the syntax and semantics of Chinese resultative from thematic operations,syntactic movements,argument raising in its components,or simply a direct fusion of predicates with Argument Structure Construction?henceforward ASC?,which are in turn rooted in trammels of the verb-centered and reductionist view,influences of research on English resultative,and failure to distinguish distinct levels amongst predicates,resultative construction and ASCs.Benefiting from previous research,this dissertation adopts a hierarchy-and interaction-based Construction Grammar approach and attempts to re-examine Chinese resultative construction.More specifically,it is primarily concerned with the syntax-semantics interface of Chinese resultative construction by focusing on the following issues:?i?the grammatical property and syntax-semantics interface of Chinese resultative;?ii?formal and semantic features of Chinese resultative;?iii?interaction between predicates and Chinese resultative;?iv?interaction between resultative construction and ASCs.To cope with these issues,this dissertation reacquaints ourselves with Chinese resultative construction from construction grammatical and linguistic typological perspectives,based on which it re-analyzes the syntax-semantics interface of Chinese resultative and proposes a hierarchy-and interaction-based analytic framework.Then,based on such a new framework,it probes into form-meaning pairing within resultative construction,interaction between predicates and resultative construction,and interaction between resultative construction and ASCs.This dissertation aligns itself with a usage-based research.Therefore,descriptions and explanations for the syntax-semantics interface of Chinese resultative are established on observations and analyses of abundant authentic data from large corpora including Modern Chinese Corpus by Center for Chinese Linguistics PKU?CCL?,Beijing Language and Culture University Chinese Corpus?BCC?,CNCorpus?CNC?,etc.Through a neo-analysis of the grammatical property and syntax-semantics interface of Chinese resultative construction,this dissertation arrives at the following conclusions:Firstly,Chinese resultative construction belongs to complex predicate constructions and is a gestalt characterized by idiosyncratic syntax and semantics independent of its components,instead of an ASC like English resultative,or the derivation from composition or integration of its components.Predicates,Chinese resultative and ASCs are on a hierarchy and lie on distinct levels,with ASCs on the top of the hierarchy,predicates at the bottom while Chinese resultative in the middle.Therefore,syntax-semantics interface of Chinese resultative is essentially the pairing of form and meaning within resultative construction on the middle level,interaction between predicates on the lowest level and resultative construction in the middle,and interaction between resultative construction in the middle and ASCs on the highest level.Secondly,Chinese resultative construction can be represented as form-meaning pair[V R]???[SEMV?manner?CAUSE SEMR?result?].It is typologically one potential pattern of causative constructions,which means its syntax and semantics are typologically motivated.Chinese resultative is syntactically characterized by four patterns,i.e.,“Transitive+Intransitive”pattern,“Intransitive+Intransitive”pattern,“Transitive+Transitive”pattern and“Intransitive+Transitive”pattern,while prosodically characterized by three main modes,i.e.,“Monosyllable+Monosyllable”mode,“Monosyllable+Disyllable”mode and“Disyllable+Disyllable”mode.But the prototypicality of these syntactic patterns and prosodic modes deceases along the above listed order.Chinese resultative construction as a whole encodes causative meaning which is diachronically inherited from causativized usage of predicates through a semantic shift whereby causative meaning conveyed by causativized predicates is shifted to[V V]construction due to the declination of causativization in the history of Chinese language.The causative meaning encoded by Chinese resultative is direct and cognitively predictable,and exhibits a gradient from prototypical natural causative meaning,to non-prototypical subjective evaluative causative meaning.Semantic roles of Chinese resultative construction are defined by itself instead of raising from that of its components.Chinese resultative profiles Causer and Causee which are determined by causative frame based on embodiment.Of these two semantic roles,Causer is featured by eventivity,directness and causativity,while the most prominent property of Causee is affectedness.Thirdly,interaction between predicates on the lowest level and Chinese resultative construction on the middle level involves the top-down sanction of slots in Chinese resultative imposed on predicates,and the bottom-up fusion of semantic roles between predicates and resultative construction.In terms of the top-down sanction,only predicates satisfying the formal and semantic requirements of the V slot and R slot can fill them,and elaborate the manner and result of causation respectively.In detail,restrained by the prototypicality of different syntactic patterns and prosodic modes,transitive predicates enters V slot more easily and intransitive predicates enters R slot more easily,while monosyllabic predicates enters both slots more easily than disyllabic ones.In addition,degree of easiness of predicate v to enter V slot partially hinges on R slot to the extent that it positively correlates to the prototypicality of the syntactic pattern and prosodic mode formed by v and r entering R slot,or the other way around.Semantic restraints of slots in Chinese resultative exerted on predicates are primarily aspectual.Specifically,predicates entering V slot are required to be activity predicates,or at least state predicates that can be construed as activities,while those entering R slot must be transitory state or acquired permanent state predicates.In addition,mutual semantic restrictions also occur between V slot and R slot to the extent that predicates entering V slot and R slot can be construed as cause and its result.As for the bottom-up fusion,participant roles of predicates v/r fuse with Causer and Causee of Chinese resultative in differing ways.Participant roles of v fuse with Causer through schema-instantiation and prototype-extension.In fusion through schema-instantiation,the whole event encoded by v is categorized as an instance of Causer,thus directly fusing with it.This is the most transparent and also the prototypical way,but due to economy and Maxim of Quantity,it is not the most common way.In fusion through prototype-extension,frame elements in the semantic frame of v,metonymic extensions from the prototype,i.e.,event encoded by v,fuse with Causer through frame metonymy,which is the most popular way.Because of prominence of frame elements,contextual factors,restrictions from causative relations,as well as other factors,the ability of v's participant roles to fuse with Causer follows the ensuing hierarchy:whole event encoded by v>core frame elements?agent/experiencer>patient/theme?>non-core frame elements?instrument/cause>other elements?e.g.,time,location??.Participant roles of both v and r can fuse with Causee through schema-instantiation exclusively.When theme/experiencer of r is co-referential to v's participant role,whether explicitly or implicitly,they fuse with Causer together,while when r's participant and v's participant are related by possessive relation,that is,r's theme/experiencer and v's participant role are construed to be co-referential indirectly through metonymy,then either role can fuse with Causee,but with r's role being the most directly affected,it is more ready to fuse with Causee.Fourthly,interaction between Chinese resultative on the middle level and ASCs on the highest level involves the bottom-up fusion of resultative construction with ASCs,and the top-down coercion by ASCs on resultative construction,which offers a unified explanation for syntactic complexity and diversity of Chinese resultative construction.In terms of bottom-up fusion,resultative construction is typically compatible with such ASCs as Transitive Construction,BA Construction,Intransitive Construction,Passive Construction and Topic Construction,thus giving rise to diversified regular constructs.But,when fusing with different ASCs,Causer and Causee are realized differently in the syntax.In fusion with Transitive Construction and BA Construction,both of them can be syntactically expressed,while in fusion with Passive Construction and Intransitive Construction,only Causee is syntactically expressed because Causer is shaded or cut respectively by these two constructions.Even if Cause is realized in the syntax in the later case,it is backgrounded.When resultative construction fuses with Topic Construction,the referential relation,focus of attention,and trajactor-landmark relation of Cause and Causee are shifted.As to the top-down coercion,some ASCs?e.g.,Transitive Construction,Ditransitive Construction,peripheral BA Construction and peripheral BEI Construction?will accommodate few extended uses of Chinese resultative construction by coercion.It is found that coercion by these ASCs arises from mismatch of numbers of semantic roles between resultative construction and ASCs.Consequently,the coercion effect is to“add”argument to resultative construction.In addition,a hierarchy-based interactive account can also provide a unified explanation for what has been called ambiguity in Chinese resultative.When analyzed hierarchically,the so-called ambiguity in resultative construction is essentially ambiguity in its constructs.Such ambiguity is the non-ideal result of interaction between different levels,and is mostly caused by metonymic instantiation of Causer and coercion by ASCs on resultative construciton.This dissertation prioritizes hierarchy and interactions between different levels on the hierarchy in the analysis of syntax-semantics interface of Chinese resultative construction,and lays special emphasis on a unified description and explanation.It is of both practical and theoretical significance.Firstly,through a hierarchy-and interaction-based Construction Grammar approach,a new analytical framework for syntax-semantics interface of Chinese resultative is established,which provides a breakthrough for its research and also illuminates research on Chinese language in general.Secondly,the hierarchical view of language and interactions between constructions in Construction Grammar have been enriched and developed through the investigation on Chinese resultative construction,based on which a hierarchy-and interaction-based Construction Grammar approach has been advocated,thus casting new light upon theoretical development of Construction Grammar.In addition,this dissertation also contributes to the localization of Construction Grammar. |
PDF Full Text Request