A Study Of Chinese Causative Constructions And Corresponding Verbs

Causation is a very important syntactic and semantic category in human languages. In Chinese, causative construction is one of the most important types of syntactic constructions. It is regarded as important as active and passive constructions. Causatives have long been a favored field of research by linguists. However, presently there exist a few problems concerning Chinese causative research. First, the syntactic--semantic relationship of causatives has been always neglected. Causatives have been investigated in absolutely syntactic manner or semantic manner. Second, the syntactic and semantic range of causatives has not been agreed on. Some advocate narrow-down, while others advocate expansion. Third, most research has been done on a traditional and theoretic basis, with positive and applied research in a weak position. These factors contribute to low representativeness and accuracy in summarizing causative verbs. The author has consulted a few reference books that list causative verbs, and has found they are not quite representative or accurate. As stated by Comrie (1981), the intense interest in causatives is because of the interaction of formal syntax and semantic analysis in their research. Only by combining syntactic with semantic analysis, can objective conditions be developed in judging causative constructions, so as to build a better causative verb vocabulary. This vocabulary is of great help to computational language processing and Chinese learning by foreigners. For a prospect of practical use, the current thesis makes some tentative research in this regard. The study aims to establish a more accurate vocabulary than ever before by an empirical means, and meantime, provide some help for teaching Chinese as a foreign language.On the basis of abroad and domestic research achievements, from a functional typological perspective, and combining syntactic with semantic analysis, the current thesis investigates two types of Chinese causative constructions, namely Zhidongshi and Jianyushi with causativity, in an attempt to ascertain their syntactic and semantic scope, and develop objective conditions for their judgment and a tentative classification of causative verbs. The author examines the causative verbs listed in Dictionary of Verb Usage one by one, screening them, in order to build a small-scale causative verb vocabulary, which could be inspiration and encouragement for further work.