| The problem of whether jianyu construction should be regarded as an individual sentence structure has been resulting in disagreement among Chinese linguistic circle from the middle of the 20th century. The grammarians who hold the positive view have different opinions on the definition, scope, and classification of jianyu construction. Shi, ling construction (使令结构), as the representative of causative construction on the syntactic level has always been taken as the stereotype jianyu construction. Meantime, it is the objective of refute by the scholars who do not recognize the status of jianyu construction as an individual sentence structure. Shi, jiao, and rang, as representatives of shi, ling construction, arose disagreements concerning their word class (to which word class they belong), their function in the sentence, and the relationship between them and other following components, esp., the second verb of the sentence. The paper attempts to analyze the semantics of shi, jiao, and rang construction so as to explore the category features, syntactic and semantic function of these three words and try to gain a more objective and reasonable comprehension of this "typical" jianyu construction in the light of the theories of grammaticalzation and construction grammar.The paper consists of four chapters:Chapter One is an introduction to the whole paper, which is divided into five parts. Part one is an introduction to this chapter. Part two introduces disagreements on the definition, classification of jianyu construction and some related problems. It serves as the general view on the research of jianyu construction. Part three is about different representations of causation: lexical, phrasal, and syntactic. It is pointed out that the causative construction with shi, ling words, which is regarded as jianyu construction, is the representation of causative construction on the syntactic level. Part four is about the shi, jiao, and rang construction. Part five is the conclusion of this chapter. It is argued that shi, jiao, and rang construction is the typical representative of causativeconstruction, which in turn is the typical representative of jianyu construction. So, researching into shi, jiao, and rang construction is helpful and inspiring to the research of jianyu construction.Chapter Two contains four parts. Part one is an introduction to this chapter. Part two is about the theory of grammaticalization, emphasizing the characteristics of grammaticalization. Part three introduces some theory of construction grammar, centering on the important view that a construction carries meaning independently of the components encoded it. Part four is the conclusion of this chapter.Chapter Three is the semantic analysis on the shi, jiao, and rang construction, which is made up of five parts. Part one is an introduction to this chapter. Part two presents the linguistic fact of the existence of the shi, jiao, and rang construction. Part three is about the syntactic features of V2P. Part four is the semantic analysis on the shi, jiao, and rang construction. This part is cut into five sections. Section one illustrates the category features of shi, jiao, and rang. Section two discusses the relationship between the two verbs, V1 and V2. Section three is about the information focus and the semantic core of the construction. Section four is the central sense of the construction. Section five is to represent the various extensions of the construction and the relationship among them. Part five is the conclusion of this chapter.Chapter 4 is the conclusion of the whole paper, which is made up of five parts. Part one is the introduction to this chapter. Part two is a summary of the category features of shi, jiao, and rang. Part three is to sum up the syntactic features of V2. Part four is about the semantic core of the shi, jiao, and rang construction. Part five is the semantics of the shi, jiao, and rang construction. Part six puts forward some open questions for discussion and further research.
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