Free Datives In German And The Corresponding Gei-nps In Chinese-A Contrastive Analysis From The Cognitive Grammatical Viewpoint

Free datives are dative NPs in German that are not valence required.Within the free datives,a distinction is made between the dativus commodi,the dativus incommodi,the dativus possesivus,the dativus iudicantis,and the dativus ethicus.These smaller groups show different syntactic characteristics and are classified according to traditional grammar into different syntactic categories.For example,the dativus iudicantis is regarded as an adverb,the dativus ethicus is assigned to the function of modal particles.Such classification makes great difficulties for the DaF-learners,especially when we encounter an unknown free dative during reading,we can not understand the meaning.It is more difficult to distinguish the dative NPs from their substitute forms and to use the appropriate form of the context.Therefore,it is necessary to research the semantic properties of the free datives.In the last few years,the researches on free dative focus on the syntactically special structures such as the dativus possessivus and the dativus ethicus.It is also suggested by some linguists to treat the dative family as a continuum.But a detailed study,which includes all free datives,remains to be conducted.As regards the German-Chinese contrastive analysis,in the earlier literature the "coverbs" such as"gei","wei","dui",etc.,are regarded as case-marks.In recent times,there are also some didactic-functional approaches that offer a new perspective.However,we haven't found any specific instructions for the teaching and learning of free datives.For this reason,I would like to try to design a feasible teaching and learning instruction for free datives.In this thesis,the following questions are dealt with:Is there a semantic inheritance relationship between the free datives and the dative object?What is the derivation process?Can the dative family be viewed as a construction?Is there a similar cognitive derivation process for GEI-NPs in Chinese?Can they also be viewed as a construction?What similarities and differences do free dative and GEI-NPs have?In order to answer these questions,models for free datives and GEI-NPs are developed to visualize the cognitive processing.I then come to the conclusion that the"object transfer" in a ditransitive structure is projected into "influence transfer" in the free datives.This "influence" can further be projected as "emotional participation" and"future profit".The influence transfer is the core of the semantics of the free datives and distinguishes it from its substitute forms.The semantics of GEI-NPs are limited by the meaning of the verb gei.Therefore,a GEI-NP can only assign the role of beneficiary/maleficiary,but cannot assign an experiencer role.Besides,the maleficiary after gei has many semantic restrictions.On the basis of the cognitive models,an attempt is then made to integrate the derivation processes and to create a unified construction for the dative family and the GEI-NPs in order to further simplify the learning and offer a different perspective.On the German side the ditransitive construction is regarded as the prototype of the dative construction.The metaphorical extensions and the semantic limitations of dative construction are presented in detail.On the Chinese side the ditransitive construction is accepted as the prototype,the metaphorical extensions and the semantic restrictions are also analyzed and compared with the German.The novelty of this master thesis is that the free datives or the GEI-NPs are brought together by cognitive models and integrated by the constructions.In addition,the two constructions are compared to illustrate the general and language-specific properties.The research results can serve the teaching and research of the free datives.