A Contrastive Study Of Causative Constructions In English And Chinese:A Systemic Functional Linguistic Approach

This research investigates the differences and similarities between English and Chinese causative constructions using the bottom-up method of Systemic Functional Linguistics(SFL)in terms of semantics and syntax.The motivations for the different use cases in the two languages will also be explored.Conceptually,causative construction is the integration of a causing event and a caused event.The caused event process is always brought about by an external causative force,in this case the causative situation expresses a composite process composed of causative action and results in a transitive system.In reference to the typological classification to causative constructions,under the guide of complementarities of SFL,this research divides causative constructions into lexical and syntactic causatives.Lexical causatives refer to those whose causative action and result are realized as a single word in a language.Syntactic causatives refer to the form in which the causative action and result are realized as two different words in a language.Syntactic causatives can be further divided into English causative object-complement constructions(Chinese pivotal constructions),verb-result constructions and double-object constructions.Based on previous definitions and classifications of causative construction,this research firstly describes the semantic and syntactic features of causative elements in causative constructions,then describes the transitive processes and its semantic configurations expressed by causative constructions and constructs a transitivity system for both English and Chinese causative constructions.A functional syntactic analysis is then taken based on this meaning.The motivations for the differences and similarities are analyzed from the aspects of grammaticalization,information structure,conceptualization and language typology.The major findings can be summarized as follows.By analyzing the semantic elements of English and Chinese lexical causatives,results show that differences exist in the realization of causative action and the achievement of result.Causative verbs in English and Chinese are different both in meaning and form.With regards to meaning English causative verbs express an implicit result while Chinese causative verbs express both an implicit and explicit result.Formally English causative verbs are mainly composed of simple words with the achievement of result,while Chinese causative verbs include simple words and disyllabic compound words among which auxiliaries such as "zhe,le,qi" are attached to certain monosyllabic words to indicate the achievement of result.In the transitivity system both English and Chinese lexical causatives express the causative action process,causative relational process and causative mental process,but the semantic configurations of the processes are different.Besides typical lexical causatives in both English and Chinese,there are two special ones in Chinese:agent only and affected only processes.The differences seen in semantic configurations can be attributed to resultative verb compounds and verb-object compounds in Chinese lexical causatives.By reviewing the grammaticalization process of these two compounds under disyllabification,the motivation for the semantic and syntactic differences between English and Chinese lexical causatives can be determined.English causative object-complement constructions and Chinese pivotal constructions share the same semantic and cognitive basis within the causative category and show the similarities in the transitive process and word order.But there are some differences in terms of the source of the causer,type of verb and semantic configurations of processes.By investigating internal causative elements on the basis of relevant parameters,it is found that the selection of the causer in vitality is different.Between the inanimate object and event,English causers tend to be inanimate objects and Chinese causers are mainly inanimate events.This choice difference is caused by the different manners of information conveyance in English and Chinese.Besides the imperative type and non-imperative type(pure causative type and help type)shared by English and Chinese,a particular kind of implicit causative verb in Chinese which can acquire causative meaning after entering the pivotal constructions.The two constructions express the same transitive processes but different semantic configurations.Generally the causative process anticipates a participant in the form of an inserted clause,but the pivotal constructions with implicit causative verbs express a special configuration of"Agent+Process+Affected" whose causative process anticipates an individual participant instead of typical event participant.The individual participant functions as circumstance in the transitivity process and acts as an adverbial in a clause.In addition,in causative relational processes,the complement of English causative object-complement constructions is implicit while that of Chinese is explicit.The above differences are closely related to the different structure types of English and Chinese which produce different constraints on the causative verb and result.On a micro level this study investigates the causer,causative action,causee and causative result of English and Chinese verb-result constructions with the relevant semantic parameters.Findings show that the causative elements share similarities in their semantic features while the units realizing semantic elements are different.A macro survey on semantic and syntactic features of the construction in English and Chinese shows that the processes,configurations of participation roles and syntactic function expressed by the two constructions are different.There are causative relational processes,causative action processes,and causative mental processes in Chinese,but only causative relational processes in English which can be attributed to the different units realizing result.The different configurations of participation roles result from the different word order in English and Chinese verb-result constructions and the flexibility of clause structure in Chinese.English verb-result constructions are the direct project from causative concept in the form of SVOR and the basic word order of Chinese counterparts is SVRO.In addition,there are numerous special clause structures in Chinese,such as reversed verb-result constructions,verb copying sentences,marked caused-motion construction,etc.which lead to different syntactic functions.A diachronic review of the basic word order of English and Chinese verb-result constructions and investigation on the mechanism of Chinese special clause structures reveal that the language topology and information structure lead to the differences.Double-object construction includes double-noun construction and dative construction.From a causative angle,double-noun construction expresses causative possessive,losing and perceptive;dative construction expresses causative possessed and causative perceived.The differences between English and Chinese double-noun constructions stem from verbal meaning,clause meaning and clause structure.Due to different lexicalization patterns,certain verbs in Chinese double-noun constructions are characteristic of "Ambivalent" which expresses two-way meaning in a single word.The construction in English is single directional,which means that an object can only be transferred from subject to indirect object;the construction in Chinese is double directional,which means that an object could be transferred either from subject to indirect object or vice versa.This difference is brought about by different match patterns of form and meaning.Out of semantic,phonetic and pragmatic reasons,in Chinese,markers for direction are usually attached to double-noun constructions to make the information clearer to convey,the rhyme in harmony,and to achieve communicative intention,which causes the different configurations and clause structures in English and Chinese.The differences between dative constructions in English and Chinese are mainly reflected in different word orders.English dative construction is the direct mapping for dative concept,while the word order of the construction in Chinese is more flexible.For example,the possessors and perceivers introduced by a preposition could be put in front of process verb for emphasis.The difference of word order is closely related to information structure,and marked information structure can achieve special pragmatic effects.As a semantic category network,there are the typical and untypical form in English and Chinese causative constructions which form a continuum.Taking form-meaning compactness as a parameter,this study analyzes the relation among different causative constructions and findings show that English and Chinese causative constructions form a continuum in form and meaning respectively.A survey of a previous contrastive study shows that the different lexicalization patterns used to express causation as well as different word order are the main differences between English and Chinese causative category.Different lexicalization patterns stem from the features of the comprehensive language aspects of English and the analytic language aspects of Chinese.The difference in word order is the result of different conceptualization patterns used to understand causative category in the two languages.Based on the Systemic Functional Linguistic approach,the present study makes a contrastive study on the semantics and syntax of English and Chinese causative constructions from micro and macro perspectives and explores the motivations for the differences.This study improves upon the weakness of the SFL in the description of causative category,which provides a theoretical basis for the description of such a phenomenon,and deepens the understanding of commonality and individuality among them.From a practical standpoint,the study helps to facilitate the acquisition of English and Chinese as a target language and provides a reference for E-C and C-E translation.