A Coercion-based Analysis Of The "Da+X" Construction

"Da+X" (DC) is a widely used construction in modern Chinese. Besides the typical "VP+NP" collocation, this construction also covers "Da+VP" collocation. From semantic perspective, many scholars at home who tried to find out all the meanings of Da did a lot of studies on "Da+X" construction( Liu,1932; Chen,1935; Cao,1962; Hu,1984; Fu,1985; Zhang,1995; Xu,1997; Zhu,2002). As Fu(1996,2004) pointed out, Da followed by different objects would be given different meanings, and the meaning of Da can only be captured when it is analyzed together with the subsequent constituents. Taking Da as a light verb, Huang(1997), Lin(2002) and Feng(2003), analyzed "Da+X" construction and found that the unconventional complicated relationship of verb-object is caused by the light verb movement. Although these scholars have paid attention on the specialty of "Da+X" construction and done much systematical researches on it, they take the verb as the focus and attempt to define the construction as a clear-cut and well-delimited category, neglecting the Gestalt properties of the DC. What is more, most of the researchers have recognized the Da in DC is a polysemous verb, they do not explain how does Da obtain these meanings. By analyzing the existed studies, the thesis applies a new approach to the study "Da+X" construction.Coercion is originally used in computational linguistics to mean the co-occurrence of words. Then, it is introduced into cognitive linguistics as a mechanism to resolve semantic conflicts between words and constructions. There are two kinds of coercion that attract public commitment. One type is construction coercion which refers to the case that construction meaning coerces word meaning when they are in semantic conflict. Goldberg is the advocate of this type of coercion. The another coercion is lexicon coercion which refers to the case that word meaning coerces construction meaning when they are in semantic conflict. Panther & Thornberg are the advocates of this type of coercion. Either construction coercion or lexicon coercion only presents one side of the coin. Each type overemphasizes one aspect and neglects the other. Therefore, the author proposes the mechanism of accommodation coercion. The accommodation coercion is composed of the integration of construction coercion and lexical coercion and puts emphasis on the fact that the two coercions happens and restricts each other simultaneously. As for the salience of the two coercions in a construction, it is decided by the specific context. Different from the before studies on grammatical constructions, the thesis emphasizes that, during the process of accommodation coercion, not only will the construction interact with the constituents, but also the constituents will influence each other, which leads to a triangle modal coercion.Therefore, the present corpus-based thesis attempts to examine and expound the Chinese compounding constructions in the light of Goldberg’s construction grammar. It adopts the Accommodation Coercion mechanism by integrating the related theories of Construction Coercion and Lexical Coercion to conduct a tentative research on the generation path of the DC in the framework of Goldberg’s construction grammar. Major findings can be listed as follows:(1) Through construction coercion, the synergic creational sense or "to do sth" meaning of the Da+X construction is added to the verb Da and X. The conflicts between the Da and X is fused by the construction coercion, through the meaning shift of Da and the emphasis on X semantically and syntactically.(2) The semantic restrictions on the access of X into the DC is related to the meaning and its category. In Da+NP construction, the allocation is meaningful as a new word or phrase under the condition that NP belongs to any object in the world except the human body or part of human body. In Da+V construction. V can only be allowed into the construction on the condition that it has alogical relationship with Da(3) By means of lexical coercion, the Da plays an important role in the action executor of the construction, X determines the center meaning of the construction. Da+X construction is a VO structure in syntactic, in which X is the object of Da. Da plays as an behavior of the verb process and X is the topic surrounded by Da. The constructional meaning is affected by the interaction between the Da and X.