A Semantic Orientation-Based Verification On The Taking-Type DOC

This thesis aims to present a semantic-orientation-based verification of the "taking" DOC in Chinese. The controversy whether the "taking" Chinese DOC verbs really carry a double object construction has been appealing to this field for decades. On one side, the "taking"-type DOC advocates have failed to produce strong convincing proof; on the other, opposing opinions which deny such an existence list several reasons, which, unfortunately, cannot stand as direct evidence. The opponents produce two pieces of evidence:1) the two NPs have a latent possessive relationship because the auxiliary "的(de)" can fit well between the two NPs, by which the opponents suggest this noun string could be a single noun phrase;2) this construction cannot be transformed into a "把(ba) construction", which has long been regarded as one threshold to differ a DOC from other structures. Formidable as the evidence may appear, they cannot qualify as direct evidence. In the meantime, the "taking" DOC advocates haven’t yet produced any evidence convincing. Professor Lu Jianming resorted to a method which combines the semantic orientation and reasoning in the hope to fetch a logical pillar for this phenomenon. However, his reasoning process fails to prove the validity of its presumption and thus, fails to reach its ultimate goal, namely, verfifying the existence of the "taking"-type DOC. The research question for this thesis is to verify whether the "taking"-type DOC does exist and present a logical reasoning process.His solution is simple but effective and aims right at the target:the semantic orientation of a certain adverb has its own requirements on the referent. For example, one of the semantic orientation requirements of the adverb "总共／一共(pinyin zonggong/yigong; translation:totally)" stipulates that the adverb only modify quantifiers and between the adverb and the quantifier there shall be no other attributives; when the adverb "zonggong/yigong" is inserted between a "taking" DOC verb and its referent and formed a structure like V+NP1+ADV+NP2, the sentence becomes grammatically incorrect, which indicates that the does not work as an attributive of the NP2.The study in this thesis believes the semantic orientation method, which gives the full play to the attributes of an adverb, has the potential to produce a piece of convincing evidence from a convincing angle. However, Prof. Lu’s reasoning process suffers from flaws:first, his judgment over the functions the adverb "zonggong/yigong" can play is incorrect because he mistook chronological relationship for the cause-effect one; second, his reasoning process is heavily inductive, rather than deductive, and, therefore, the predication fails to be distributive. In conclusion, Prof. Lu’s reasoning fails his own expectation.However, the semantic orientation of an adverb has an edge over other methods in that:1) the introduction of an adverb does not compromise the original structure of the target sentence because adverbs keeps relatively independence from the main clause;2) it won’t distort the relationship between different sentence elements as inserting "的(de)" does. Considering that Chinese does not have clear symbols to mark the different grammatical functions of words, adding any unwanted elements like "的(de)" and "把(ba)" would, instead of helping clarifying their syntactic roles, only bend the structure more toward the analysts" subjective and preconceived ideas.This thesis summarizes the opponents’arguments into three major ones, reviews Prof. Lu’s logic and presents an improved version of deductive reasoning.First, Prof. Lu’s reasoning is based upon such an assumption:no attributives are tolerated between "总共／一共(totally)" and the quantifier; this thesis examines the defective and unproven hypothesis and points out the sense of awkwardness of the modified sentence is generated by multi-attributive disorder, rather than the so-called conflict between the adverb "zonggong/yigong" and the attributive preceding the quantifier.Then, through the analysis and contrastive study carried out, we come to realize that our mission to authenticate the DOC status of the "taking" verbs can be converted to such a question:can the two NPs function separately as object and stay independent of each other? Then the thesis resorts to another attribute of the adverb "总共／一共(totally)" the backward-oriented exclusiveness, and produces a fairly logical reasoning process.Fourth, the thesis explores the requirements for a legal taking-type DOC, including restrictions on applicable verbs and suitable relationship between the two objects. The thesis abstracts four principles which govern the relationship between the two objects, scans through all potential possessive relationships and then propose when the double-object possessive relationship can only accept the the categories which indicate1) ownership of property or asset,2) membership of a group, and3) who produce a certain product. As to the usage of verbs, the author sieves out a group of verbs according to the previously stated principles and then regroups them into six categories, which separately indicate:1) the action leads to gains of an action agent;2) the action leads to gains of dative source and action recipient;3) the action benefits the dative source;4) the action hurts the interest of dative source;5) the action benefits both the action agent and the dative source;6) the action benefits the action agent and, in the meantime, hurts the dative source. Then the article presents a review of the four principles, three types of possessive relationship and the six categories of DOC-compatible verbs.Finally, the thesis scans through the whole deductive reasoning process, evaluating the distribution of terms and revealing the certain defects lurking inside for further study.