| Verb reduplication is common in many languages.Chinese verb reduplication is distinctive in its syntactic and semantic features.For example,semantically,for the verb reduplication with the dimunitive meaning,the increase on the number of verb forms does not lead to the corresponding semantic increment,therefore,the composition of the meaning of its parts fails to account for the meaning of the verb reduplication.Syntactically,there are an array of paradigmatic constraints,for example,verb reduplication cannot be followed by resultative complements,or objectives coding the meaning of quantity.Inchoative verbs cannot be reduplicated.All these give birth to mountains of researches on the topic.However,the following questions are open to better solutions:1.What is the grammatical status of Chinese verb reduplication structures?2.What are the semantic constraints of Chinese verb reduplication structures?3.What are the rules and mechanisms that govern the changes to the semantic sanctions imposed upon the Chinese verb reduplication structures when the structures co-occur with other constructions?4.What are the semantic motivation of Chinese verb reduplication structures?The lack of better solutions to the above questions lies in the inadequate researches into the grammatical status of the structure,which accounts for the two tendencies on this research topic,the first focuses on the semantic features of the reduplicable verbs,and takes these features to be the semantics constraints of verb reduplication structure,neglecting the semantic sanctions imposed by the verb reduplication structure.The second attends to the situational aspect and event meaning of verb reduplication structure,overlooking the semantic contribution of verbs to the verb reduplication structure.Due to the inadequate researches into the grammatical status of verb reduplication structure,previous researches on the relation between verb reduplication structure and the sentences that co-occur with it assume that semantic features of the events denoted by the co-occurrent sentences determine the reduplicability of verbs.These researches explain why certain structures,for example,causative structures,release the semantic constraints on verbs,however,these researches neglect the fact the Chinese verb reduplication as a whole imposes semantic constraints.Moreover,they do not probe into the rules and mechanisms that govern the changes to the semantic sanctions imposed upon the Chinese verb reduplication structures.As the Chinese verb reduplication structures are not studied as an independent,holistic structure,researches into the semantic motivations of the structures are far from thorough and comprehensive.According to Construction Grammar,a construction has its meaning which is independent of its parts and its own argument structure.Construction is of dominant status in relation to verbs in the construction.The fact that the meaning of Chinese verb reduplication structure can not be deduced form its parts,that Chinese verb reduplication structure imposes semantics constraints on the sentential subject reveals that it is a construction.The combination of top-down and bottom-up research paradigm adopted by Construction Grammar makes possible a comprehensive study on the interaction between verbs and the construction: starting from the constructional meanings,semantic sanctions imposed by the construction on verbs can be searched,starting from the semantic features of verbs,the semantic contribution made by verbs to the polysemy of construction can be studied.Besides,rules and the mechanisms that govern the changes to the semantic sanctions imposed upon the Chinese verb reduplication structures when the structures co-occur with other constructions can be studies in the framework.Therefore,if it is clear that Chinese verb reduplication structure is a construction,the inadequacies in previous researches can be overcome,and better solutions to the questions are possible in the framework of Construction Grammar.If the the approach is from the form to the meaning,possible form-meaning relations can be discovered among constructions that share the same or similar surface form and motivations that trigger the semantic change can be arrived at.This dissertation focuses on Modern Chinese mono-syllabic verb reduplication structure with the dimunitive meaning,attempting to solve the following research questions in the Goldberg framework of Construction Grammar:1.What is the grammatical status of the Modern Chinese mono-syllabic verb reduplication structure?2.What are the semantic constraints sanctioned by the Modern Chinese monosyllabic verb reduplication structure?3.What are the rules and mechanisms that govern the changes to the semantic sanctions imposed upon the Modern Chinese mono-syllabic verb reduplication structure when the structure co-occur with other constructions?4.What are the motivations that weaken the iconic form-meaning relation in Modern Chinese mono-syllabic verb reduplication structure?Due to the fact that the dimunitive meaning of Modern Chinese mono-syllabic verb reduplication structure can not be deduced form its parts,that this structure requires that the sentential subject should be agent,this dissertation argues that Modern Chinese mono-syllabic verb reduplication structure with the dimunitive meaning is a construction with the form VV,which relates to two slots,and can be represented as: X+VV+Y.The X slot is often filled by a constituent which bears an agentative relation to VV.The meaning of the construction is that the agent performs the limited durative,procedural action event.With the grammatical status of Modern Chinese mono-syllabic verb reduplication structure(abbreviated as VV Construction)determined,this dissertation targets the second and the third research questions.To solve the second research question,this dissertation adopts the corpus-based research approach,obtaining all the 5944 VV constructions from the Corpus Online corpus.After detailed studies on previous researches,on the situational aspects of VV construction and verbs,on other semantic features of verbs,coupled with syntactic test,this disertation proposes the hypothesis on semantic constraints imposed by VV construction on X slot,the hypothesis on the hierarchy of semantic coherence of verbs with the VV construction,and the hypothesis on the other semantic constraints by VV construction.When the hypotheses are testified,this dissertation presents the following semantic constraints by VV construction:(1)VV construction imposes the following semantic constraints on arguments in X slot:first,the argument sanctioned by VV construction in X slot should be mostly agent.second,the agent argument sanctioned by VV construction in X slot follow the animacy hierarchy,namely,[+human]>[+animals]>[plants]/[-animate].(2)the verbs sanctioned by VV construction should have the semantic features [+dynamic][-result].(3)the hierarchy of semantic coherence of verbs with the VV construction is: activity>semelfactive>accomplishment> stage-level state> individual-level state> achievement(4)the other semantic constraints imposed by VV construction are:first,verbs sanctioned by VV construction should be verbs of basic domain.second,verbs with the semantic feature [+strong force] are given limited sanction by VV construction.third,verbs with the semantic feature [+negative] are given limited sanction by VV construction.fourth,verbs imply or strongly imply the semantic feature [+result] are given limited sanction by VV construction.Based on the corpus data on the syntactic features of VV construction,this dissertation further studied the integration of verbs into the construction and its mechanism,and the semantic contribution of verbs and the arguments in X slot to the polysemy of the VV construction.For the third research question,this dissertation adopts the corpus-based approach and collostrutional analysis to probe into the rules and mechanisms that govern the changes to the semantic sanctions imposed upon the Modern Chinese mono-syllabic verb reduplication structure when the structure co-occur with other constructions.The research findings are as follows:1.For the experiencer/tool/beneficiary argument to fill in the X slot of VV construction,the single-sentence construction that co-occurs with VV construction must be causative and has a meaning of modality.2.If the single-sentence construction that co-occurs with VV construction is conversational in nature,or its [+activity] menaing is weakened,then the X slot of VV construction need not be filled with an arugument.3.In single-sentence constructions with a salient meaning of modality that cooccur with VV construction,the semantic compatibility of semelfactive verbs with the VV construction increases;In single-sentence constructions with a causative meaning that co-occur with VV construction,the semantic compatibility of stage-level state verbs with the VV construction increases.4.The other semantic constraints imposed by VV construction still hold when the single-sentence constructions co-occur with it.The findings reveal that modality is crucial to releasing or changing the constraints on VV construction.Coercion and related cognitive mechanisms account for the release of and changes on constraints.For the fourth question,the dissertation reveals that subjectivity motivates the weakening iconic form-meaning relationship of the VV construction. |
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