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

The resultative constructions in English and Chinese have always been a hot issue,because of its uniqueness and importance.It is a double statement syntactic structure whose general meaning is “the semantic relationship of an action and the result caused by the action”.Its syntactic form can be characterized as the structures such as SVOR,SVRO,and SVR.Through careful reading,exhaustive searching and statistical analyzing of the diachronic classic literature,we have found that the previous study of the resultative constructions is mainly based on the perspective of the traditional grammar,generative grammar and cognitive linguistics,seldom on the perspective of cross-linguistics and typology.Its synchronic study focuses on the syntactic and/or semantic features,sentence generation,semantic restrictions and so on,while only a relatively few diachronic studies concentrate on some special sub-constructions,historical periods or ancient books.In brief,its previous study is mainly confined to the synchronic study,rarely on diachronic study.Especially,there are quite few contrastive studies on the diachronic evolution features and regularities of the resultative constructions in English and Chinese.Besides,there is a lack of deep research on the cognitive mechanisms and motivations behind the differences and similarities of the diachronic evolution of the resultative constructions in English and Chinese.In view of the current research situation,from the perspective of diachronic construction grammar,based on the theories of construction grammar,grammaticalization and dynamic force system,this paper tries make a cognitive contrastive study of the resultative constructions in English and Chinese.Qualitative and quantitative analysis combined,descriptive and interpretative methods combined,synchronic and diachronic study combined are all employed.This dissertation thus mainly deals with the three questions: 1)What are the diachronic evolution processes of the resultative constructions in English and Chinese? 2)What are the similarities and differences of the diachronic evolution processes,features and regularities of the resultative constructions in English and Chinese? 3)What are the cognitive mechanism and the underlying motivation behind the similarities and differences of the diachronic evolution processes and features of the resultative constructions in English and Chinese?Through the detailed description and analysis of the features of the diachronic evolution of the English and Chinese,we have drawn a clear map of the whole diachronic evolution processes of the resultative constructions in English and Chinese,described and generalized their characteristics and regularities,and in the end,accounted for the underlying cognitive mechanism and motivation behind the similarities and differences between both of them.The English resultative construction has evolved from “S+O+R+Vt” to “S+Vt+O+R”or “S+Vt+R+O”,then to “SVOR”.The evolution chain of “S+O+R+Vt” to“S+Vt+O+R” took place in the early medieval peoried.This evolution change belongs to constructionalization,resulting in a new-born construction with a new form and a new meaning pairing.The change can be counted as postconstructionalization.The Chinese resultative construction has evolved from “S+Vt+Vt”to “S+Vt+Vi”,then to “S+Vt+R”.The evolution chain of “S+Vt+Vt” to“S+Vt+O+R” belongs to constructionalization,which took place in the late ancient times or the early medieval Chinese period.In general,both the English and Chinese resultatives have experienced the nonstop evolution of the “constructional change – constructionalization –constructional change”.There are both similarities and differences during the periods of the diachronic evolution processes of the resultative constructions in English and Chinese.We have made a detailed cognitive contrast in terms of phonetics,word order,syntax,semantics as well as pragmatics,even and mechanism and motivation.Then we have found that their major similarities include: First,the dominant word order type with the highest usage frequency tends to be the same type i.e.SVR word order.The modern English and modern Chinese are still in process of word order from “separated statement” to “continuous statement”.Second,the“causative” subclasses of the resultative constructions in English and Chinese are higher than the “implicite causative” subclasses.Third,the dynamic expressions of the resultative constructions in English and Chinese can convey concise semantic meaning and achieve high pragmatic efficiency.The differences mainly lie in: First,the number of the word order type of the English resultative sentence is decreasing while the number of the word order type of the Chinese resultative sentence is growing.Second,the productivity of the Chinese resultative sentence is higher than that of the English resultative sentence.Third,the main evolution mechanism of English resultative construction is conceptual metaphor while that of Chinese is analogy.Lastly,the primary motivation of English resultative construction is the decline of its inflectional marking system while that of the Chinese resultative construction is a bisyllablization trend.As for the cognitive causes underlying the similarities and differences between the resultative constructions in English and Chinese,we have found that there mainly exist three points:(1)The English people follow the principle of sequential iconicity in the use of the resultative sentences while the Chinese people follow the principle of distance iconicity in the use of the resultative sentences.(2)The British people are accustomed to using a sequential approach to decode the resultative events from the perspective of sequence scanning while the Chinese people prefer to using a superposed conceptualization in the integrated interpretation of the resultative events from the perspective of summary scanning.(3)In construing the “causative” concept,the hierarchical structure of English resultative construction focuses on the the result while the hierarchical structure of Chinese resultative construction concentrates on the relationship between the predicate verbs and the resultative complement.The results of this study are expected to be helpful for the learners to get a better understanding of the similarities and differences between English and Chinese.Also,the results can help learners to grasp the sentence structure,word order and other respects of language learning and practice.Further more,they can provide help and reference for foreign language teaching,Second Language Acquisition,teaching Chinese as a foreign language,English-Chinese translation and dictionary compiling.