A CMP Research On "X Be X" Construction

“X BE X” is a literally redundant expression which doesn’t convey any newinformation. But, it could express speakers’ conversational intention exactly withspecific meaning in verbal communication. As a special linguistic expression in dailycommunication,“X BE X” has drawn a lot of attention of scholars at home andabroad including logical, rhetorical, semantic, pragmatic and cognitive fields.However, the cognitive research of its meaning production mechanism based oncorpus data hasn’t been achieved.Within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics (including ConstructionGrammar), this thesis remedies Construction Coercion Theory by integratingMetonymy and Prominence Principle, and builds a new CMP model that isMetonymy-Prominence Based Construction Coercion Theory. Then, on the basis ofCMP model, this study systematically analyzes the syntactic structure, semanticfeature and pragmatic function of the collected356items of “X BE X” constructionvia quantitative and qualitative approaches, which aims to explain the meaningproduction mechanism of “X BE X” construction. This study is mainly discussedfrom the following two parts:Firstly, this thesis tries to remedy the limitations of Construction CoercionTheory by integrating Metonymy and Prominence Principle, for ConstructionCoercion could not overall interpret the meaning production mechanism of “X BEX” construction and the differences between the two Xes. Hence, a new CMP model,Metonymy-Prominence Based Construction Coercion Theory, is established.Secondly, a corpus of356items is collected for the first time to figure out themeaning production mechanism of “X BE X”. Through systematical and detailedanalysis of its syntactic structure, semantic feature and pragmatic function, aconvincing interpretation of its meaning production mechanism is presented. Theresults show that: syntactically, the closed data can be divided into four types that are “NP BE NP”,“AdjP BE AdjP”,“VP BE VP” and,“AdvP BE AdvP”. Among theexpressions,“NP BE NP” makes up85.6%of the whole construction and is regardedas the prototypical example of “X BE X” construction. Moreover, the syntacticfunctions of the two Xes are different for syntactic coercion takes place.Semantically, the prototypical meaning of “X BE X” construction is to expressfeatures or properties of X. Its interpretation process of meaning is that:(1)“X BEX” construction enforces syntactic coercion and semantic coercion on X;(2) thecognitive domain of X is activated. With the help of metonymy mechanism, thereferential meaning of X turns to its feature meaning;(3) the feature meaning of X isprofiled in “X BE X” construction. According to the entrenchment degree, the thesisdivides “X BE X” construction into two types: established type and innovative type.Pragmatically,“X BE X” indicates the generalized conversational implicature andsubjective intention of speakers. In addition, it reflects the beauty of rhythmphonologically.