The Cognitive Syntactic And Semantic Research On Split Possessive Construction

Split possessive constructions are hot topics in syntactic and semantic interface studies for their “irregularities ” or mismatches between form and meaning.The present dissertation,one of such further studies,chooses,as cases in point,the possessor-subject and possessee-object construction(PSPOC),the passive possession construction and the BA possession construction,to explicate the licensing conditions and cognitive motivations behind the three syntactic and semantic features of separation of the possessor and possessee,argument alternation and argument augmentation in the three constructions.Researches from structural approach,taking each discretely,focused on minute descriptions of the formal features of the split possessive constructions.Generative linguists have attempted to interpret the formation mechanism of split possessive construction by analyzing the transformation of source sentence from its deep structure to surface structure.Despite valuable researches on split possessive construction in previous studies,few studies have explored the cognitive universality or commonalities behind the above constructions by way of taking them as a family of split possessive constructions and giving unified accounts for the above-mentioned three features.This dissertation aims to explore the licensing conditions and motivations for the normal possessive construction transforming into the split possessive construction from Cognitive Linguistic perspective.Specifically,the dissertation will center on the following three questions.1)What are the licensing conditions for split in these split possessive constructions respectively?2)What is the motivation of argument alternation?3)What is the motivation of argument augmentation?For the first question,Chapter 4,Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 are intended to unveil the differences between the normal possessive construction and the split possessive constructions by describing as much in detail as possible the features of the predicate verbs,nominal arguments and argument relations,and constructional meanings across the two types of constructions,and at the same time give theoretical accounts for such differences.The second and third questions are intended to give a unifying account for the motivations for the splitness of possessive constructions.The second question will be explored within the cognitive autonomy and dependence(A/D)framework in the light of the process of the mental path by which events are conceptualized by energy transfer,and mapped on the syntactic structure.The A/D model of event conceptual structure is expected to explain the argument alternation in the split possessive constructions.The third question tries to account for argument augmentation by examining the modeling process from the inner structures of grammatical chunks within the A/D alignment model from the view of cognitive valence.For the possessor-subject and possessee-object construction,the findings show when the possessee is definite,construction not only introduces new information,but also emphasizes influence on the possessor,when the possessee is indefinite it can actually receive a definite reading depending on the predicate verb and the context it appears in,when the possessee and the locative possessor become split from each other they can only be matched with high cognitive salience.Further for the construction,the predicate verb,whether taking an aspectual particle or not,will satisfy the requirement of cognitive grounding through tense,aspect and modality,which helps to improve the qualification of PSPOC;argument alternation is more likely to occur when the transitivity of the predicate verb is higher than that with low transitivity.The semantic types of the verbs,besides their common feature of the change of state,will also affect the type of the matched possessive relation and further affect the formation of the split possessive construction.As for the affect of animacy on the construction,the higher the animacy,the more possibility for it to get polysemous readings and more possible to become split.The possessee,when of low animacy,is more likely to move to the front of the predicate verb so as to form PSPOC.In terms of the effect of alienability on the construction,the higher the alienability,the more possible to receive polysemous readings,or vice versa or even having just one reading,namely PSPOC.For the passive possession construction,the findings show that the predicate verbs should refer to possessee semantically,have the semantic features of [+control]and [+result],and be complex for cognitive grounding.The more subjective the meaning of the construction,the more appropriate the passive possession construction will be for linguistic expression.As for the effect of alienability on the construction,the lower the alienability between the possessor and the possessee,the more possibility for the passive possession construction.There are four reasons that result in the inconsistency of quantity between Chinese and English passive constructions,which are entailment,cognitive online process,perspective and actual meaning in the construction.Such asymmetry implies that the expression for the Chinese passive construction tend to be more specific,while for English unified into one construction format.For the BA possession construction,the findings show it is derived from the causative event schema,the agent should be of high animacy and strong ability to dispose,and the inalienable or very low alienable possessive relation between the possessor and the possessee will affect the processing of the syntactic structures via their accessibility.The motivation for formation of the BA possession construction lies mainly in the discourse level factors like rhythm,topic-chain,and discourse intention,with rhythms to enhance the balance of structure,topic-chain for coherence,discourse intention for the expression of the speaker ’ s attitude,emotion,focus intention and genre.To sum up,the common licensing conditions for the split possessive construction are the affect of event action on the possessor and the profiling of the result state and so on.The two conditions serve as the base for the analysis of the motivation for the split possessive construction from two dimensions,of conceptual structure of events and cognitive valence.The event conceptual structure can account for argument alternation in terms of whether the thematic relationship is autonomous,whether the result state is prominent and whether the existence of the theme is presupposed by a close possessive relationship.The valence relation can account for the different orders of the components connected to each other in split and normal possessive construction,and accordingly,the A/D relationship among components in split possessive construction is also different from that in normal possessive construction,as does the components’ role of trajector and landmark.This research,taking the three different constructions under one category of split possessive construction within a unified framework of Cognitive Linguistics has three theoretical contributions.On one hand,it contributes to seeking cognitive universality behind diverse linguistic facts.On the other hand,it helps to make theoretical generalizations at a higher level,thus achieving better consistency and convincingness of theoretical interpretation.Furthermore,this research contributes to enriching and deepening studies on possessive structure,existing construction,passive structure and BA structure.