Comparative Study English-chinese Double Object Structure Typical Theoretical Framework. Class

Double object construction refers to a construction that a predicate is followed by two objects. Of the two objects, one refers to a person, and the other refers to a thing. The object referring to a person is called indirect object or theme; the object referring to a thing is called direct object or recipient; both the two objects have verb-object relationship with the predicate. The paper first introduced former studies on the DOC in both Chinese and English, such as studies of Chomsky, Kayne, Larson, Goldberg, Zhu Dexi, Ma Qingzhu, Zhang Bojiang, Gu Yang, Lu Jianming. And then, with Prototype Theory from cognitive linguistics as theory framework, the paper defined DOC in both Chinese and English as a prototype category and classified prototypical and non-prototypical members under this category according to semantic features of DOC, that is, DOC formed by three-place verb are prototypical members of the category; DOC formed by two-place, one-place and non-verb structure are non-prototypical members of the category. The paper then made comparative analysis on the prototypical members of DOC between English and Chinese and concluded some similarities and differences, which are caused by different generative mechanisms of English and Chinese. Finally, based on the semantic features of DOC category, the paper proposed different opinions against Lu Jianming's and Xu Jie's studies on the structure of"Chi Le Ta San Ge Pingguo"and"Da Sui Le Ta Si Ge Beizi", pointing out that these kinds of structures can't be classified into Chinese DOC category.