A Cognitive Construction Grammar Approach To Qilai Middles

This thesis is a detailed study of Chinese qilai middles in the framework of Cognitive Construction Grammar (Hereafter CCxG) by Goldberg. The status of qilai middles as a construction is firstly established and a constructional account for the syntactic and semantic features of Qilai Middle Construction (Hereafter QMC) is demonstrated following the core principle of CCxG– the syntax of the construction is motivated by its semantics.In the introductory part, qilai middles are defined clearly both syntactically and semantically so as to exclude other similar formations. Qilai does not have evaluative meaning and the evaluative meaning of qilai middles cannot be entirely predicted from the adjective phrase (Hereafter AP), and thus the status of qilai middles as a construction is established according to the definition of construction by Goldberg. QMC displays a polysemous nature and has three different interpretations, which are interrelated with each other and form a systemic semantic network.Syntactically, QMC's grammatical subject is not restricted to the patient role. It can also be instrument, location, means or goal, as the cognitive motivation for choosing them as the subject is the same– the perceptual prominence of these roles in the scene. Verb-qilai (Hereafter V-qilai) in QMC has undergone a process of stativization which is motivated by the non-eventive reading of QMC. Semantically, the conduciveness of the non-agent role is preferred to its"responsibility"as argued by He Wenzhong (2007c) because QMC's subject cannot initiate the action but can only be conducive to the occurring of the action in the manner denoted by the AP. Other semantic features like the implicit agent, non-eventiveness and time-irrelevance are also accounted for from a constructionist perspective.Fundamentally, the syntactic representations and the semantic features of QMC are all motivated by the construction meaning– a subjective evaluation of the non-agent subject's properties, which complies with the main principle of CCxG– the syntax of the construction is motivated by its semantics. The study provides further evidence to the universality of middles as a category and displays great explanatory power of CCxG for Chinese constructions.