A Constructional Approach To The Chinese Verb-resultative Construction "Yi(一) V Yige(一个) R"

The Chinese verb-resultative construction “Yi V Yige R” has been widely used in spoken and written language in Modern Chinese. Though some aspects of this construction, including its syntactic form and semantic restriction on the resultative argument, have been investigated, little attention has been directed to a systematic and adequate description and explanation on the syntactic and semantic/pragmatic features of the construction per se. Put it in this way, these studies do not commit themselves to explore the whole construction in the light of a constructional approach. In particular, the research background of the Chinese verb-resultative construction “Yi V Yige R” has been primarily concerned with the following aspects. Firstly, the previous studies do not give a distinct classification of the construction, only one Chinese oral pattern “Yi V Yige A” has been explored by Huang Peiwen(2001). Secondly, despite the fact that some scholars devote themselves to the study of the independent constituents within the construction, such as the word class of “Yi” and the grammaticalization of “Ge”, little attention has been paid to the internal relation between the non-fixed components, especially the study of the semantic denotation of R slot. Furthermore, the pragmatic focus of the whole construction has not been systematically explored. Thirdly, few investigations have been directly focused on the formation and development of the construction from a perspective of construction grammar and the explications of the pragmatic features are rarely investigated.In order to tackle these issues and controversies in this field, the present study, in virtue of the Goldberg’s framework of construction grammar, attempts to examine the syntactic, semantic/pragmatic features of the construction on the basis of data retrieved from such corpora as CCL, BCC, as well as some popular newspapers, magazines and other published reading materials. Moreover, this thesis tries to present an adequate exploration on the Chinese verb-resultative construction “Yi V Yige R” in terms of inheritance network, subjectivity and subjective quantity. Specifically, three research questions are involved in the present study: What is the classification of the Chinese verb-resultative “Yi V Yige R”? What are the syntactic, semantic/pragmatic features of the construction? What are the explanations of the Chinese verb-resultative construction “Yi V Yige R”? To answer the above three questions, research methods including quantitative and qualitative study, introspection and corpus-based study, description and explanation are adopted in this paper. Our major findings are summarized as follows.First and foremost, the present paper classifies the Chinese verb-resultative construction “Yi V Yige R” into three micro-constructions on the basis of semantic denotation, that is, patient-oriented verb-resultative construction, agent-oriented verb-resultative construction and verb-oriented verb-resultative construction.Secondly, it conducts a systematic description on the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features of the construction with the assistance of the vested theories and collected examples. It can be found that the three micro-constructions have the similar syntactic form and pragmatic features, but are differentiated in the semantic denotation of R slot within the construction. Meanwhile, the whole construction is endowed with subjectivity and expresses a large quantity of subjective estimation of the speaker. Moreover, the pragmatic focus is placed on R slot at the end of the construction. A thorough comparison between these three distinctive constructions on the level of syntax and semantics is demonstrated as table 2 in chapter four.Finally, the present study necessitates an explanation of the emergence and development of the construction in terms of a constructional approach. The research object is established and influenced by two related constructions within the network of construction grammar, namely, “Yi X Yige Y” construction and “Yi V1 Jiu V2” construction. As a matter of fact, the new construction has inherited some syntactic, semantic/pragmatic features and other information from the above two dominant ones. Specifically, the research object “Yi V Yige R” construction in the present study and the dominant constructions “Yi X Yige Y” and “Yi V1 Jiu V2” are closely connected both in the form and function. Information on the level of syntax, semantics and pragmatics is successfully inherited from the two dominant constructions because that information does not conflict with information specified in the inheritance network. Consequently, inheritance links in this thesis illustrate the fact that all non-conflicting information among these three different but related constructions can be shared to some extent.With regard to the explanation of pragmatic features, subjectivity and subjective quantity contribute a lot to the whole construction. Through the description and analysis of each constituent in the construction, it can be concluded that the construction expresses a large quantity of subjective estimation towards the entities, states or numbers after a comparison of the settled normal quantity which comes from the interaction with the outside world and consistent concepts or values in the speech community.The present study, taking all the advantages and shortcomings of the previous studies into account, has established a construction hierarchy by virtue of the properties of our research object with the help of established theories in cognitive linguistics. Through this case study, we hope that it can pave a new way for the future research of the Chinese verb-resultative construction. In addition, as a special linguistic phenomenon in Chinese language system, the descriptions and explications of its features and idiosyncrasies demonstrated in the present paper may have some hints and enlightenment to the foreign language teaching and research in the future.