A Study On The Difference Between Chinese Give Type And Take Type Ditransitive Construction By Means Of Prepositional Paraphrase

The ditransitive construction is a special linguistic phenomenon which has caught the attention of many scholars. Previous study on the ditransitive construction mainly falls into three domains: the structural approach, the generative grammar approach and the cognitive approach, each having its inadequacies. And the two former approaches fail to provide a satisfactory explanation for the ditransitive construction. This thesis conducts a study on the ditransitive construction from the perspective of Construction Grammar proposed by Goldberg.Scholars hold different views on the scope and classification of Chinese ditransitive construction, no uniform scope definition and classification criterion has been proposed. In previous studies, the classification of Chinese ditransitive construction is mainly conducted according to the meaning of the verb involved, and the ditransitive construction is categorized generally into two types: the give type and the take type. The give type ditransitive construction is considered as the typical Chinese ditransitive construction. Although the take type ditransitive construction has the same sentence structure with the give type ditransitive construction, there is controversy on whether the take type should be taken as the ditransitive construction. This thesis regards the take type construction as a type of ditransitive construction, and talks about the difference between the give type and the take type ditransitive construction through prepositional paraphrase.According to the results of the study based on Construction Grammar, the core meaning of the ditransitive construction is"the volitional giving or transfer", and it builds a hierarchy with its expanded senses via metaphorical mechanism. The ditransitive construction is a gestalt, which constraints its components and also absorbs meanings from them. In English, the ditransitive construction can be paraphrased by its corresponding prepositional expression except for individual examples. A similar method is adopted in this thesis: the prepositional paraphrase with"gei"is used to reveal the difference between the give type and the take type ditransitive construction.