A Contrastive Study On Unmarked Patient-Subject Construction Between English And Chinese

Unmarked patient-subject construction has attracted much attention from English and Chinese scholars. However, just two types of this construction, namely "middle construction" and "unaccusative construction" have been focused, so as to lead to an incomprehensive understanding in this regard. By using methods of principles and parameters theory and componential analysis, this thesis is devoted to the contrastive study of English and Chinese unmarked patient-subject construction within the framework of contrastive lingusitc.Through the comparison of syntactic and semantic properties of this construction in two languages, this thesis is to describe, analyze and interpret the similarities and differences in English and Chinese unmarked patient-subject construction. Moreover, the constraints that are implied will be summarized and interpreted.This thesis redefines the scope of "patient" and clarifies the definition of unmarked patient-subject construction. In order to establish the comparative foundation, on the basis of analysis of the semantic features of VP phrase, the unmarked patient-subject construction is divided into two types: the state construction and character construction. The syntax structure of state construction are N+V,N+V+Adj/Adv,N+Adv+V; The syntax structure of the character construction is N+V+Adj/Adv. The major focus of this research, therefore, is to attempt to compare two types of unmarked patient-subject construction. A comparative study is made on these two types of construction concerning the syntactic and semantic properties of the sentence elements. Firstly, the subject of unmarked patient-subject construction involves two kinds: the overt subject and the covert subject in both English and Chinese, though the covert does not appear in the surface structure, it exists in the deep structure and has the same syntactic and semantic functions as overt subject existing in the surface structure. Furthermore, the thesis discusses the features of the predicate in unmarked patient-subject construction. Notice that it takes two arguments in the deep structure but expresses as one argument predicate in the surface structure. According to discussion, it is proposed that the predicate verb in unmarked patient-subject construction is particular, which holds both features of transitive and intransitive verb. Finally, on the basis of these comparisons of the above features, this thesis illustrates the derivation of English and Chinese unmarked patient-subject construction. It is argued that the generation of this construction attributes to the detransitivization of the predicate verb; the internal argument has to move to the subject position as the external argument has been suppressed. The process of derivation is also the process of changing the argument structure and semantic feature of predicate. Simultaneously, each of the sentence elements possesses specific semantic features. However, Chinese unmarked patient-subject construction appears more productive than its English counterpart.On the basis of comparison, this thesis aims to analyze syntactic structure and semantic properties of unmarked patient-subject construction in English and Chinese, and to explain the derivation of this construction. To sum up, some problems have been found and solved from a new point of view. Also, some other new problems are left for further studies.