A Study Of The Analysis And Comparision Of "上/下" In "V 上/下"

"V上/下"in modern Chinese are generally considered as verb-direction constructions, verb-resultative constructions and verb-particle constructions, wherein"上/下"can be looked as directional, resultative complements and particles. With a high complexity in syntactic features and diverse meanings, the complements and particles"上/下"do not have a salient regularity in the collocation with verbs or a rigorous symmetry themselves. It is helpful for us to understand their nature, meanings, usage and inter-connections between them as well as as a resource for other studies to study the paired-structure like"V上"and"V下".The dissertation can be divided into four parts:In the first part, we summarize related researches which are divided into three parts according to their emphases (nature, meanings, comparison) done by former scholars. We mainly agree the research method implemented by scholars since 1990s no matter in the study of nature or meanings which is drawing conclusions based on multi-levels such as semantic-syntactic-cognitive levels. However, this research method has its own limitations, such as the difficulty in selecting the point of penetration, putting more strength on analysis than summarization, etc. We make it clear that our point of penetration is the classification of meanings of"上/下"based on the theory of salience and find a way for this kind of research.In the second part, we analyze meanings of"上/下"based on the theory of salience and their collocation with verbs, which are classification by the theory of salience as well, according to these meanings based on former studies."上"has three meanings: directional meaning, resultative meaning and aspectual meaning."下"has two meanings: directional meaning, resultative meaning. Though these meanings are intermingling with each others, we can still classify them based on their semantic salience. We describe semantic elements of the verbs which can be collocated with"上/下"based on verbs'semantic features.In the third part, we depict the syntactic features of"V上/下"based on verbs'semantic features and classification of"上/下". Syntactically,"V上/下"are generally materialized as"V上/下O"and"V上/下"while differences of themselves often lie in transformative patterns such as"V得上/下O", so our discussion on syntactics is based on their transformations.In the forth part, we compare"V上"with"V下"and draw conclusions about their symmetry and asymmetries. With grammaticalization theories and cognitive linguistics, we make explanations of their asymmetries. For example, there is no counterpart of"上3"because there is a difference in the depth of grammaticalization between"上"and"下". Furthermore,"下"does not have auspicious meaning as"上"does, so we just, cognitively, do not want to see the outcomes of"下", then we do not get a"start and continue"meaning in the process of grammaticalization of"下".