Diachronic Constructional Approach To Chinese Resultative Construction

Resultative construction is a very important linguistic phenomenon in Modern Chinese, whose development has long been a major concern for scholars. Though considerable achievements have been gained in diachronic research on it, there still remains not inconsiderable issues and controversies. Firstly, most of previous studies have been primarily concerned with schematic resultative construction at the upper level of resultative constructional hierarchy and attempted to deduce when, where and how it has developed with data of varied sub-schematic or micro resultative constructions at lower level along the constructional hierarchy, which is also the root for many controversies and problems concerning its development. Secondly, little attention has been directed to development of and relationships among sub-schematic and micro resultative constructions. Thirdly, most scholars have ascribed the development of resultative either to change in the language system, e.g. declination of causative usage and disyllabification, or to the grammaticalization of certain components within the resultative construction(usually the result argument), rather than the syntactic/formal and/or semantic changes of the resultative construction per se.On that accout, this thesis focuses on the partially schematic resultative V Po(破) ‘break’ construction and examines how the construction per se has emerged and developed. Existing studies on this construction are only sparsely dispersed among research on schematic resultative, and systematic and monographic studies are even rarer. Most of these studies have generally followed the stereotype of research on schematic construction, and many problems and controversies confronting previous scholars of schematic construction remain unsettled, especially issues on mechanisms for the development of this construction. Based on previous achievements, this thesis is mainly engaged with changes in form and/or meaning of resultative V Po(破) ‘break’, in particular, its syntactic and semantic features, constructionalization and constructional change of it and mechanisms for its development. The major findings are:(I) Resultative V Po(破) ‘break’, as a partially schematic construction in Modern Chinese, generalizes over three distinct sub-constructions: concatenative causal resultative V Po(破) ‘break’, radiative causal resultative V Po(破) ‘break’ and reflexive causal resultative V Po(破) ‘break’, and is located on the top of the construction hierarchy.(II) These three sub-constructions are of differing schematicity. Specifically, concatenative causal resultative V Po( 破) ‘break’ sanctions two other micro-constructions: variant of objective result and variant of metaphorical result, and is thus situated in sub-schematic level. Radiative causal resultative V Po(破) ‘break’ and reflexive causal resultative V Po(破) ‘break’, together with the two variants of concatenative causal resultative V Po(破) ‘break’, directly sanctioning various constructs lie in micro-construction level.(III) Partially schematic resultative V Po(破) ‘break’ construction, concatenative causal resultative V Po(破) ‘break’ at the sub-schematic level, and micro-construction level constructions radiative causal resultative V Po(破) ‘break’, reflexive causal resultative V Po(破) ‘break’, variant of objective result and variant of metaphorical result, they together constitute a taxonomic construction hierarchy, as illustrated in Figure 4.2.(IV) Resultative V Po(破) ‘break’ construction was constructionalized in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, due to the semantic and syntactic neoanalysis of serial verb construction V Po( 破) ‘break’. But this newly constructionalized construction sanctions only the prototypical construction, i.e. concatenative causal resultative V Po(破) ‘break’ with objective result.(V) In Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties, resultative V Po(破) ‘break’ gained productivity and schematicity. On the one hand, the initially constructionalized prototypical construction, concatenative causal resultative V Po(破) ‘break’ with objective result, gained new meaning and became polysemous in this period. On the other, it derived the variant of metaphorical result through metaphorical extension(which is embodied in conceptual metaphors ABSTRACT THING IS CONCRETE THING and ABSTRACT PROCESS IS PHYSICAL PROCESS) and neoanalysis. Though developed from the former, the latter is endowed with relatively low degree of compositionality, thus existing as an independent construction. Meanwhile, due to analogization and metaphorical extensions, some of the constructs are only partially sanctioned by the original construction, which leads to a mismatch between the constructional from and meaning. Then neoanalysis occurred, resulting in the constructionalization of radiative causal resultative V Po(破) ‘break’.(VI) From Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties on till the 1990 s, basic semantic and syntactic features of resultative V Po(破) ‘break’ remained nearly consistent, although many micro-constructions did fall out of use and new ones are recruited continuously. Until the 1990 s, new contexts of usage gave rise to mismatch between form and meaning of resultative V Po(破) ‘break’ again, which subsequently brought force a new round of neoanalysis. As a consequence, reflexive causal resultative V Po(破) ‘break’ emerged. Simultaneously, resultative V Po(破) ‘break’ becomes more productive and schematic and develops into a complex constructional hierarchy. The developmental map for resultative V Po(破) ‘break’ is represented in Figure 5.5.This thesis, reflecting on the advantages and shortages in previous studies on resultative, attempts to explore changes in form and/or meaning in the partially schematic resultative V Po(破) ‘break’ construction, by taking into consideration both macro level changes in the language system and micro changes within the constituents of the construction. We have established a construction hierarchy for this construction and re-examined mechanisms for its development. This case study is committed to providing a new approach and perspective for research on Chinese resultative construction and shedding light on the development of the whole resultative construction network. In addition, it offers converging and typological evidences from Chinese for Diachronic Construction Grammar.