On The Interaction Of Constructional Coercion And Lexical Coercion In Construction Grammar

Cognitive linguists hold the view that the language system can be simply described by the concept of Symbolic Unit or Construction. Langacker(1987, 2007) argues that constructions consist of more than two symbolic units, but some scholars hold different opinions. Goldberg(1995, 2006) claims that morphemes should also be regarded as constructions. Despite the different opinions, the scholars’ attention has mainly focused on constructions above the morpheme level so far. The lexical coercion exists only when coercion study is above the lexical level.At the beginning, a number of scholars(including Talmy, Michaelis, Goldberg, Taylor) notice the value of coercion gradually. Goldberg(1995: 150) points out that the construction’s thematic structure often plays the leading role and coerces the verb’s argument structure when the latter one is not entirely consistent with the former one. In recent years, more and more linguists have devoted themselves to constructional coercion researches. Problems also appear with the fast development of coercion theory. Some linguists, such as Croft, De Swart and Michaelis, may overemphasize constructional coercion and ignore the function of lexical coercion, which may lead the language study from one extreme to the opposite side.Thus it is important to attach same attention to both constructional coercion and lexical coercion. This thesis will explore the interaction between constructional coercion and lexical coercion in basic coercion theory. Instead of overemphasizing constructional coercion or lexical coercion, this thesis summarizes four different situations in the interaction between them by analyzing ditransitive construction, English caused-motion construction and other specific cases. The first one is the situation in which constructional coercion plays the leading role. The second situation is that the lexical coercion plays the leading role. The third one is the case in which construction and lexical item perform coercion function together and the whole sentence meaning contains both constructional meaning and lexical meaning. The last situation is a special situation in their interaction named accommodative coercion. It means that neither construction nor lexical item is powerful enough to coerce the other. Both of them will withdraw their coercion function so that the sentence can be accepted.The study on the interaction is of great importance. Based on Coercion Theory, this thesis elaborates the value of constructional coercion and lexical coercion in analyzing some language phenomena. Meanwhile, by analyzing different types of lexical coercion and different situations of interaction between constructional coercion and lexical coercion, this thesis will also broaden the research scope of coercion to some extent.To sum up, the concept of coercion is extensive. It cannot be simply summarized as constructional coercion or lexical coercion. Sentence meaning is the result of interaction between them.