The Conventionalization Of The Transitive Use Of Sneeze

In the framework of Cognitive Linguistics, more and more attention is being paid to the relationship between constructions and lexical entries. Goldberg (1995) accounts for different argument realization patterns by means of the interaction of verbal semantics with constructional semantics. When explaining the sentence"Pat sneezed the napkin off the table", she stresses the mechanism of coercion of construction on the verb sneeze. This sentence has also been discussed by some other scholars. However, present studies on the transitive use of sneeze are mainly logical reasoning based on a priori assumption that sneeze is and only is an intransitive verb, and on the effect of construction on lexical entries, while lacking researches from the empirical angle, while neglecting the fact that the transitive use of sneeze does exist in English and is probably entrenched and conventionalized after being repeatedly used by language users.Based on Usage-Based Theory, this thesis retrieves exhaustively the transitive use of sneeze by taking advantage of large well-balanced corpora and analyzes this usage from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives. An investigation is conducted from the dimensions of lexicon, syntax, and lexical-constructional interface. It is found that the transitive use of sneeze first occurred in 1845, and its salience in the language system has been proved by its token frequency. It is also proved in this thesis that verbal sneeze possesses transitive meaning potential from the lexical perspective; its occurrence in the construction"SNEEZE + NP"has its physiological basis, and a prominent usage has shown in construction"SNEEZE + NP + AdvP", such as"SNEEZE + NP + off"; its co-occurrence with various prepositions in the construction"SNEEZE + NP + PP"has also revealed its collocational competence and productivity. At the same time, an investigation from the diachronic perspective finds that the transitive use of sneeze is experiencing a constant rise, and verbal sneeze has possessed the typical feature of a transitive verb. Combining with the latest researches on the criteria of word class identification, this thesis concludes that the transitive use of sneeze has been entrenched and conventionalized. Although it is not applicable to be absorbed in pocket learner's dictionaries due to its range of application and the politeness of social interaction, this transitive use should be recorded in those large and medium-sized dictionaries whose main function is to record all conventionalized language uses in an honest and all-round way.This study can not only further the study on the relationship between construction and verb, but can also have important implications for dictionary compilation.