A CG Approach To The Modern Chinese "Proto-patient-VP-Proto-agent" Order S-O Reversed Sentences

The modern Chinese S-O reversible sentences refer to sentences in which the positions of the subject and the object are reversible with the verb and the sentence meaning of logical truth value remaining unchanged. Mainly employing the"bottom-up"method, previous researches focus on the classifications of the reversible sentences and the descriptions of reversibility restrictions in all or part of the reversible sentence structures. The introduction of CG (construction grammar) provides a new perspective to study the reversible sentences. At the same time, so far no researches exclusively focus on"Proto-patient--VP--Proto-agent"order sentence structures. This thesis is just intended to take them as the research focus and explore what and why concerning the reversibility restrictions in them with CG approach.Goldberg (1995) thinks that"a CONSTRUCTION is a form-meaning pair"(p.4). The"Proto-patient--VP--Proto-agent"order reversed sentence structures and their correspondent"Proto-agent--VP--Proto-patient"order sentence structures have different forms and cognitive meanings, and therefore belong to different constructions. The reversion process from the"Proto-agent--VP--Proto-patient"order sentence structure to the"Proto-patient--VP--Proto-agent"order reversed sentence structure is coerced by the construction instantiated by the latter reversed sentence structure. A success in coercion can produce acceptable reversed sentences; a failure in coercion may lead to unacceptable reversed ones. On the basis of the forms and the cognitive semantics of the existing"Proto-patient--VP--Proto-agent"order reversed sentence structures, two types of constructions are generalized in this thesis and their existence is testified. By analyzing the constructional coercions in these two constructions, the reversibility restrictions on the reversion process from the"Proto-agent--VP--Proto-patient"order sentence structure to the"Proto-patient--VP--Proto-agent"order reversed sentence structure are described and explained.The present study shows that two constructions are instantiated by the"Proto-patient--VP--Proto-agent"order reversed sentences: the Distributing & Sharing Construction, and the Resultative Construction. The Distributing and Sharing Construction expresses a quantity relation of distributing and sharing between the agent and the patient. This constructional meaning coerces the verb, the agent and the patient into new semantics or properties. The Resultative Construction expresses the semantics that the patient causes the agent to undergo some changes and achieve a certain state. This constructional meaning coerces the patient, the agent, the verb, the complement, the relation between the agent and the patient, and the"aspect"of the event. These constructional coercions account for the reversibility restrictions of some S-O reversible sentences.