A Contrastive Study Of Chinese And English Resultative Constructions

Based on previous researches of Chinese and English resultative constructions, this thesis makes a comprehensive contrast of the properties of resultative constructions of the two languages. It first reviews the basic aspects such as the definition, types of resultatives, and word orders of resultatives, and then makes a comparison between them. In the following chapters, two main issues concerning resultative constructions in both Chinese and English are illustrated. The first one is about patterns of semantic orientation of resultatives which have been a major issue for decades in Chinese linguistics. And the other one concerns the distribution of resultative constructions. To account for this phenomenon, this paper turns to the traditional theory about the event structure of verbs. In the light of Boas'Event-Frames of English resultative constructions, I adopt Boas'theory in both Chinese and English resultatives. As one important part of the distribution of resultatives, selectional constraints on resultatives are also discussed.Through comparison and contrast, this paper concludes that resultatives in Chinese and English are alike functionally, while syntactically they bear certain differences. It is worth mentioning that few studies have been done between the contrast between Chinese and English resultatives. From a cross-linguistic perspective, this thesis makes a through contrast between Chinese and English resultative constructions, which can help researchers better understand the intriguing linguistic phenomenon.