A Metonymic Study Of Ditransitive Construction

This thesis is a conceptually metonymic study of ditransitive construction from a constructional perspective. It aims to build different metonymic cognitive models by clarifying metonymic relationships existing between arguments and construction, verbs and construction so as to provide an explanatory frame for ditransitive construction. It is hypothesized that metonymic relationships play an active part in the cognitive operation between ditransitive construction and arguments, ditransitive construction and verb. This thesis, based on these metonymic relationships, will propose the notion of metonymic cognitive model (MCM):1) A and B are two closely related concepts;2) A and B are in the same Idealized Cognitive Model (ICM );3) A is conceptually more prominent than B;4) Activation of A will give rise to activation of B by means of various metonymic relationships.This study is a qualitative study of N1VN2N3 based on a self-built corpus. The majority of data in the corpus are obtained from Oxford Advanced Learner's English-Chinese Dictionary, The English-Chinese Dictionary, CCL Corpus, and Google Search. The research is committed to the following questions. 1) What is ditransitive construction? 2) Why is the term"ditransitive construction"preferred to define N1VN2N3? 3) What motivates coercion? 4) What is metonymic cognitive model? 5) What are these metonymic relationships?The major findings of the study include the following points:1) Ditransitive construction is preferred to term N1VN2N3 in this thesis in that N1VN2N3 is studied from a semantic, syntactic, cognitive perspective.2) Ditransitive construction is described as N1VN2N3 structure in this research in that a semantic transfer is hardly displayed in N1+V+N3+Prep.+N2, N1+V+N2+Ving, N1+V+N2+Ved, and N1+V+N2+V'. And what's more, the distance between N2 and N3 in N1+V+N2+Adj., N1+V+N3+gei+N2, N1+ba+N3+V+N2, and N1+Prep.+N2+V+N3 cannot highlight the ditranstivity of the verb.3) When the meaning of construction and that of lexical items are in conflict, constructional meaning probably coerces lexical meanings, which is called semantic coercion. It is found in the thesis that this phenomemon is motivated by different metonymic relationships, and hence metonymic coercion in semantics. 4) Metonymic cognitive model is a cognitive model in which Concept A can metonymically activate Concept B. It is proposed that in ditransitive construction, Institution MCM, Location MCM, Causation MCM, Whole-and-Part MCM, Containment MCM, Reference MCM, Event MCM, Actual-and-Potentiality MCM, Instrument MCM and Manner MCM are very actively involved.Findings of the thesis have both theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, the research strengthens the explanatory power of construction grammar. The research also provides a metonymic approach to polysemy of lexical items. Practically, it may promote the development of grammar research, language acquisition, language teaching and machine translation.