A Cognitive Analysis On Chinese Resultative Construction

Chinese Resultative Construction, as an important linguistic phenomenon, has long been a hotly-debated topic in linguistic circle and occupied a unique place in the study of syntax and semantics. Different from in English Resultative Construction, in Chinese Resultative Construction, its result can either be verb or adjective. Semantically, Chinese RC means the action denoted by the first verb cause a change of state denoted by the result (the second verb or the adjective). We all know that previous researches mostly focus on tackling with such issues as the head, transitivity, valence and argument and etc.. Although more and more scholars begin to explore the source of causation in Chinese Resultative Construction, up till now, a full and satisfactory explanation has not arrived. Thus it leaves a space for my study.With the theory of Construction Grammar and Conceptual Structure which originate from the background of Cognitive Linguistics, the author at first discusses Chinese RC from the perspective of syntax and semantics. Instances of RC are divided into different types according to their syntactical configuration assisted by their semantic features. They are: (i)SVROBJO Construction,(ii)SVRSUBJO Construction,(iii)SVRSUBJ Construction. They share the basic constructional meaning: an argument undergoes a change of state as a result the action denoted by a verb. Of course, they differ from each other with regard to sub–configuration concrete meaning. The author explores and discusses the three sub- configuration respectively and gets a clear knowledge about their similarities and differences.Then, the author uses Conceptual Structure to further analyze those different sub-patterns, including verb-copying structure and Chinese BA structure relevant with Chinese RCs. From the perspective of conceptual event structure, the construction codes a complex event, which consists of two sub-events. This kind of integrated event encodes a complex cognitive concept and entails force dynamics, which then can be expressed by one independent sentence. Although these generalizations clearly exist, there is also a great deal of idiosyncrasy involved in the construction. So some idiosyncratic instances and small subclasses of the construction are analyzed and discussed respectively in the thesis.By combination of the two theories, the author gives a synthetical explain about Chinese resultative construction. The success to account for the critical issue about Chinese RC explicates that both Construction Grammar and Conceptual Structure should be considered brand new and workable associative approaches to deal with Chinese constructions, even though a lot of work needs to be done to explore constructions in Chinese.