An Analysis Of The Chinese Ba Ge Construction In CP Model: A Cognitive Approach

This thesis integrates the Coercion Theory and the Principle of Prominenceto build the theoretical framework: CP Model. And in order to reveal theproduction mechanism, the methodology of qualitative and quantitative study isadopted to investigate the corpus of373sentences. And the production mechanismof the Ba ge construction is coercion→prominence→metonymy metaphor.This thesis analyzes the Chinese Ba ge construction from the perspective ofsemantic, syntactical and pragmatic features based on the closed corpus, and theresults are:Firstly, on the perspective of semantic features, NP₁, NP₂and the verb phrasein the Chinese Ba ge construction become harmonious with the whole constructionthrough metonymy and metaphor.44pieces of NP₁are the verb phrases in thecorpus, which are coerced and profiled the meanings of result （the meaning of theresult instead of the meaning of verb metonymically） in the Chinese Ba geconstruction; Among the373pieces of corpus,131NP₂s realize the consistencywith the whole construction through metonymy. All these metonymies in NP₂arerealized through the coercion of the construction on the “unqualified” noun phrasesin order to highlight the concrete meaning, categorized meaning and the definitemeaning; what’s more,7metaphorical NP₂s which keep harmonious with theconstruction through coercion exist in the corpus. At last, the verbs in the ChineseBa ge construction are coerced to highlight the result meanings.Secondly, as for the syntactic features, the Chinese Ba ge construction profilsNP₂in syntax but coerces NP₁and the verb phrase. A. NP₁s are either omited orentailed or empty in syntax, but its subject power doesn’t change at all.219piecesof NP₁s are functioned as the subjects in the construction and accordingly, theNP₂s are the patient roles; B. from the perspective of figure of speech, NP₂hasdifferent figure of speeches in the Chinese Ba ge construction, and they are the features of proper noun （146）, indefinite noun （77）, definite noun （106）,categorized noun （18） and the concrete noun （26）. In the Chinese Ba geconstruction, the indefinite nouns are coerced and profiled the definite feature,and the individual noun is coerced and profiled the categorized feature, and theabstract feature is coerced and profiled the concrete feature; C. The predicates arecoerced their transitive features and the intransitive feature is profiled in theconstruction.Thirdly, the pragmatic features are that the Ba ge construction conveys anunsatisfying result. And50verbs in the corpus implicate this negative meaning,the other128verbs （the number of the construction that show the badresults/states （178） minus the number of the verbs that implies the negativemeanings （50）） are coerced and profiled by the construction to be the meaning ofthe unsatisficationThis thesis analyzed the production mechanism of the Chinese Ba geconstruction under the CP Model from the perspective of cognitive way, hopingthat this thesis could be beneficial to the researches of the other Chineseconstructions.