A Cognitive Study Of The Co-occurrent Interrogative Construction “V+XX+Predicate”

The non-interrogative usages of the Interrogative words are very important parts of the study of interrogatives. So far the studies about interrogative words mainly focus on the classification of the non-interrogative usages of single interrogative words. The studies of co-occurrent interrogative words don’t get much attention from most of the scholars. Thus this thesis takes the co-occurrent construction “V+XX+predicate”, which is a special form of the same interrogatives with separated usage, as the study object. By analyzing the syntactic structure and semantic features under the guide of Prototype Theory and Construction Grammar, the thesis has made a tentative study about the motivation of the emergence of the non-interrogative meaning. Meanwhile the thesis also discusses the corresponding English expressions to make a contrast.Generally, the co-occurrent interrogative words can be classified into four types, namely, the same interrogatives with successive usage, the same interrogatives with separated usage, the different interrogatives with successive usage and the different interrogatives with separated usage. The object of this thesis “V+XX+Predicate” is a special form of the same interrogatives with separated usage. Based on the linguistic data collected, the thesis analyzes the six subconstructions of “V+XX+Predicate” in detail, namely “V+naernaer+Predicate”, “V+nalinali+Predicate”, “V+nana+Predicate”, “V+shenmeshenme+Predicate”, “V+shasha+ Predicate” and “V+shuishui +Predicate”.Syntactically, the construction “V+XX+Predicate” consists of three parts, the verb part “V”, the co-occurrent interrogative words part “XX” and the “Predicate” part. After the examination, we found that the “V” in the construction are mainly single syllable verbs and can be classified into action transitive verbs, psychological action verbs, imperative verbs, some of the oriented verbs and the verb of judging. The two interrogative words in the construction have different syntactic functions. The first one is the object of the verb while the second one is the subject of the predicate which can be a state, or an action. Semantically, the interrogative meaning disappears. They exhibit the non-interrogative meanings which are called universal reference and anaphoric reference. Pragmatically, the construction strengthens the degree of emotion and consolidates the steadiness of the relation between conditions and results.This thesis suggests that the construction “V+XX+Predicate” is a peripheral member of non-condition concessive sentence. But according to the family resemblance, it still has some typical features of the prototypical members. The constructional meaning of it is that no matter what the condition is, the result will be the same. It can be schematicalized as(A) CAUSE X to be ALL in a STATE/ACTION. Guided by the theory of construction coercion, we find that in order to accord with the infinity and arbitrariness of the conditions, the interrogative words, which are used to ask for the specific information, are forced to abandon their interrogative meaning and thus the non-interrogative meanings emerge.The thesis tentatively analyzes the emergence of non-interrogative meaning of the co-occurrent construction “V+XX+Predicate” and hopes to make some achievements for the scholars that are fond of the study of interrogative words and the English and Chinese learners.