Decategorization Of English V-ing Construction

English v-ing construction has rarely been treated as a manifestation of decategorization of the English verbs. Though traditional grammar books at home and abroad have made detailed introduction of the syntactic functions of v-ing construction, the functions of this construction are described as special linguistic phenomena. When some modern linguists approach this topic, they try to explain some linguistic forms with v-ing construction from cognitive perspective and regard them as peripheral members of prototype category. However we still hold all the previous research on v-ing construction is isolated explanation based on cognitive grammar and fails to give us an overall picture of its semantic characterization. With regard to many practical linguistic problems such as why there are so many similarities as well as differences between the v-ing construction and other grammatical categories or why the v-ing construction can sometimes be used as nouns, adjectives and prepositions etc., the present linguistic research neglects the effect of human conceptualization on meaning construction, thus rendering the language learners some difficulties in acquisition of this linguistic construction.Having the theory of categorization by prototype and decategorization as the theoretical foundation, the thesis assigns considerable analysis to the English v-ing construction from the cognitive perspective. By comparing the semantic-syntactic characterization of this construction with that of such basic grammatical categories as Verb, Noun and Adjective etc., the thesis aims to make a unified account of their relations. And by employing a deduction-generalization method combined with experimentation, thethesis argues that categorization of linguistic objects should be based on their semantic-syntactic characterization and that the understanding of English v-ing construction is no exception. Following such a guideline, the thesis proposes that the v-ing construction is the peripheral member of grammatical categories because of the family resemblance between their semantic-syntactic characteristics. This thesis tries to prove that as peripheral members of grammatical categories, how the v-ing construction gets away from the prototype category gradually and manifests the special semantic-syntactic characterization of decategorization.This thesis enables us to take a fresh look at the English v-ing construction which is different from the traditional grammar. Findings of this thesis show that as peripheral member of grammatical categories, the construction manifests semantic-syntactic characterization of decategorization and constitutes the continuum between different categories. With this notional basis, we find it easier to understand why v-ing construction shares some semantic-syntactic characterization with such grammatical categories as Verb, Noun, Adjective, Connective, etc.. The thesis points out in the conclusion that the theory of decategorization is supplementary to the theory of categorization by prototype and can explain the v-ing construction more effectively. The earlier studies of the peripheral semantic-syntactic characterization of this construction is stative compared with our dynamic account from the perspective of decategorization. This thesis can be a reference for following studies of similar phenomena of the multifunctionality of linguistic forms.