A Cognitive Study On Ditransitive Construction Of Inanimate Subject

Ditransitive construction is one of the frequently occurring sentence patterns. In recentyears, ditransitive construction has become a hot topic and aroused attention of scholars athome and abroad. Ditransitive construction of inanimate subject (DCIAS), as a greatextension of typical ditransitive construction, is an important and innovative sentencestructure. However, much attention is attached to typical ditransitive construction and there ismuch space for the study of DCIAS. Based on construction grammar and some cognitiveconcepts, this thesis tries to give a more satisfactory explanation on this particular linguisticphenomenon.Goldberg puts forward construction grammar, which classifies the argument ofditransitive construction into agent, patient and recipient roles. Grammatically, ditransitiveconstruction includes NP+V+NP1+NP2and NP+V+NP1+P+NP2with the typical meaning“agent successfully causes recipient to receive patient”. Compared with typical ditransitiveconstruction, which requires animate agent, animate recipient and concrete patient, DCIAS isthe research focus. Based on construction grammar, the thesis analyzes semantic features ofeach argument and the verbs that can come into the construction. Besides, the relationshipamong DCIAS and other constructions is also discussed. In order to provide cognitivemechanism to DCIAS, the thesis adopts the theory of metaphor and metonymy.Through a detailed analysis, the following conclusions may be drawn from theresearch:First, against argument constraints on typical ditransitive construction, inanimate agentargument, non-living recipient argument and abstract patient argument can exist in DCIAS.Influenced by construction meaning, besides the verbs with give-transfer sense, many verbswithout obvious give sense can also come into this construction and many verbs associatedwith DCIAS are animate.Second, each construction is highly related and the relationship among them is veryclose. There exist similar and different syntactic and semantic relationship between DCIAS and imperative construction; DCIAS and cause-motion construction; DCIAS and resultativeconstruction. Therefore, it has also proved that construction is the basic unit in humanlanguage.Third, the mechanism of metaphor and metonymy plays an important role in theprocess of understanding DCIAS. The thesis concludes six types of metonymic process andthree types of metaphoric process.