Compound Directional Complements Asymmetry Research

Directional complement is a special subclass in the Chinese syntax constituents. Its grammatical meaning is complicated. I discover that each group of one-to-one corresponding directional complements, e.g. , shanglai ("上来") and shangqu( "上去"), xialai("下来") andxiaqu ("下去") is symmetrical in their form, while is asymmetrical in their use. In this paper, on the foundation of the investigation to the corpus no less than one million words, researches are made into the asymmetrical phenomenon in the aspects of grammaticalization, semantics, pragmatics and cognition, etc.Chapter II to V are the main body of the paper. In addition to the description to the corpus, the paper tries to explain the asymmetrical phenomenon of the directional complements.Chapter II supplies a comprehensive description to the corresponding directional complements based on their usage. The difference of the frequency and grammatical meaning between the two complements emerges, besides the frequency and the main verbs matched of the complements.Chapter III to V are for explaining. Chapter III makes a thorough probe into the asymmetrical phenomenon between the two directional complements diachronically. The research explores the process of grammaticalization of the compound directional complements and their asymmetrical behaviors in the Chinese language history, from post-Tang Dynasty to Qing Dynasty.Chapter IV is to analyze the asymmetry between the two directional complements of lai ("来") and qu( "去") on pragmatics. The chapter draws the conclusion that choosing lai ("来") and qu("去" ) is relative to the way of narration and the style.In Chapter V, the author discusses the asymmetry of the directional complements on the cognitive linguistics. It is the image schema theory to disclose the law of this asymmetrical phenomenon.The sixth part of the paper is a supplementary. The writer discovers that the asymmetry has something to do with the semantic feature of the main verbs, probably.To sum up, the current research conducted both macroscopically and microscopically, makes both description and an explanation to the linguistic facts that there is asymmetrical phenomenon between the corresponding directional complements.