A Corpus-Based Diachronic Distinctive Collexeme Analysis On The Way Construction

The way construction is one of the main types in the English argument construction. Since Goldberg(1995) systematically described the semantic constraints on the way construction, scholars have devoted to studying its semantic and syntax from the synchronic perspective. Although the role of analogy extension on the way construction is confirmed by Israel(1996) in its diachronic development, it still needs a quantitative empirical data support. Hilpert(2013) points out that every construction has its own development history. Nowadays, more and more attention has been paid on the research of diachronic constructional change. In order to find out the diachronic change of way construction, and to obtain the overall characteristics of the change from the empirical perspective, this thesis devotes to investigating the way construction within the usage-based theory combing Construction Grammar and grammaticalization, adopting the diachronic distinctive collexeme analysis as the analytical method and using the COHA(Corpus of Historical American English) as the data source. Three following questions are aimed to be solved: 1) How many time periods can the development of the way construction be clustered? 2) In different time periods, which collexemes are strongly attracted by the way construction? 3) By analyzing the strong collexemes in different time periods, are there semantic changes in the way construction? If so, what semantic characteristics are presented by the development of the way construction?This study finds that:(1) By operating the VNC, this thesis obtains five time clusters in the development of the way construction, and they are respectively 1810 s, 1820 s, 1830-1910 s, 1920-1940 s and 1950-2000 s.(2) In different time periods, collexemes which are strongly attracted by the target construction are different. In 1830-1910 s, the distinctive collexemes belong to the domain of path creation or clear. In 1920-1940 s, the distinctive collexemes convert to force exertion expressing a violent, mandatory or compelled experience of a human being, which continues the meaning of creation or clearing of a path. In 1950-2000 s, the strong distinctive collexemes denote a metaphorical path, and the metaphorical path motion undergoes in some circumstance including event, career, social organization, activity and so on, which indicates that the subject referent moves with an abstract destination aiming to achieve his or her goal.(3) There exist semantic changes in the development of the way construction. The first period stresses that the subject referent creates a new way by getting rid of difficulties or obstacles. The second period points to a violent, mandatory or compelled experience of a human being, which continues the meaning of creation or clearing of a path. The last period indicates that the subject referent moves with an abstract destination aiming to catch his or her purpose. The result further verifies Israel?s conclusion—the meaning of the way construction has undergone analogical extension to the exertion of force in order to make progress on a path.Also the results reveal that as time goes by, the way construction has undergone the process of grammaticalization in syntax and semantics. In syntax, the early research points out in old English, the directional needn?t coexist with the simple locomotional verb in way construction, for the verb itself denotes movement, and way refers to the concrete road which can be stepped on. With more and more non-locomotional verbs entering into the modern way construction, the semantic of the way construction becomes abstract, which as a result, requires the directional must coexist. This process is in accordance with usage-based theory, as frequency strengthens the representation of a spoken sequence(of whatever size) and increases the mutual dependency of each of its components(Boyland, 1996). In semantic, through the quantified detailed review of the historical data, the present study confirms the analogy extension raised by Israel(1996) in the study of usage-based grammaticalization. The semantic pathway of the way construction from concrete object movement to abstract metaphorical movement, through which the exertion of force to make process has been extended to any purposive, goal-directed activity. This change offers support for the usage-based idea that the representations of utterances in a speaker?s mind—their strength and their neighborhood relations—actually do have some force on the progress of language change. The grammaticalization of the way construction shows that, in the process of language use, for the actual communication needs, people use more and more verbs in the way construction, resulting in the high productivity of the way construction. This result on one hand, increases the semantic clusters of the target construction, on the other, promotes its semantic towards abstraction. Meanwhile, by analogy extension, the way construction gradually forms two main categories: the means interpretation and the manner interpretation. Although both the means interpretation and manner interpretation imply that the subject referent moves along the path designated by the prepositional phrase, the means motion emphasizes the path from non-existed to existed, while the manner motion lays emphasis on the accompanied behavior. Then the way construction is finally viewed as a simple polysemy network, with the means interpretation counting as a core and manner interpretation as an extension which is realized by inheritance links that shows gradience. The type frequency of means verbs dominates in number than the manner verbs, so this article agrees with Goldberg?s assertion: the means interpretation is the basic sense of the way construction, while the manner interpretation is an extension of the means interpretation. Moreover, non-locomotional verbs appearing in the target construction benefits from the coercion of the target construction, meanwhile, inherits the whole sense of the way constructionThis thesis hopes to offer a new perspective on the diachronic research of the synchronic construction grammar by discussing the semantic change of the way construction adopting the usage-based theory and to some extent to promote the quantitative empirical study on construction grammar and to enrich the relevant diachronic studies on the way construction.