| This thesis looks into the concatenation principles of the verb phrases in serial verb constructions from the perspective of cognitive grammar,using Mandarin Chinese as linguistic data.The majority of previous studies are carried out either in the structuralist tradition or within the generative framework,and both approaches are flawed.The traditional approaches are mostly descriptive in nature and did not provide satisfactory in-depth understanding of the phenomenon,and the formalist approach ignores the important role that meaning plays in determining the concatenation principles.Taking a different,cognitive-semantic approach to this phenomenon,two major findings are made in the thesis.The first finding is that Mandarin Chinese serial verb construction is a complex phenomenon with respect to the concatenation principles among the verbs.Specifically,the concatenation principles of different types of SVCs are different.Moreover,even for the same type,their sub-types are also different in terms of concatenation principles.Furthermore,the types of SVCs that are non-canonically coordinate or subordinate do NOT form a homogenous type;instead,they deviate from the prototype in varying fashions and to varying degrees.The second finding pertains to the similarities and differences between prototypical coordinate/subordinate construction and serial verb constructions,which can be summarized in three aspects.Firstly,SVC with ZHE and Intransitive Motion SVC are typical subordinate constructions and Transitive Motion SVC is a typical coordinate construction.Secondly,two sub-types of Sequence-of-action SVCs and the Manner SVC with ZHENG are atypical coordinate constructions,but they are atypical for quite different reasons.The two sub-types of Sequence-of-action SVC are Non-causal SVC and object-sharing SVC.For the first sub-type,it is atypically coordinated because there is always a sense of sequence among the events denoted by the two verbs,so that they are never co-equal.As for the second type,the situation is determined by whether the second verb is grounded or not:if it is grounded,it is a non-canonical coordinate construction,for the same reason as the Sequence-of-action SVC,when it is ungrounded,it behaves like subordinate SVC.As for the Causal SVC,another sub-type of Sequence-of-action SVC,and the Manner SVC with ZHENQ they are regarded as non-typical coordinate construction because the two constructions place more emphasis on the second part of the clause,which functions like trajector,Thirdly,the Descriptive SVC is a non-canonical coordinate construction because,although both clauses are profiled,they always share one common element,so that the coordinands are not intact.The two findings indicate that the concatenation principle of SVCs is a complex phenomenon,and suggest that seeing SVC as homogeneous and trying to account for all the types of SVC with a single principle is undesirable.A full recognition of the complexity of linguistic phenomenon is more preferable for our inquiry. |
