A Comparative Study Of Chinese Yue(越)A Yue(越)B Construction And English The X-er,the Y-er Construction From The Perspective Of Construction Grammar

This thesis focuses on the comparative study of Chinese yue(越)A yue(越)B construction and English the X-er,the Y-er construction from the perspective of Construction Grammar,trying to probe into their constructional features and constructional meanings respectively.On the basis of corpora extracted from CCL and COCA,the thesis carries out a quantitative study of the lexical categories and collocation of the constituents of the two constructions,as well as syntactic features of the whole constructions.A qualitative approach is applied to the research on constructional meanings and constructional constraints.Besides,comparative method is employed to bring out their similarities and differences in these aspects.Some similarities between yue(越)A yue(越)B construction and the X-er,the Y-er construction are found.1.In terms of their constructional features,1)Both of them are marked constructions including fixed(“ 越 ” and the respectively)and variable components(represented by A,B,X and Y);2)A prominent similarity of the lexical category of these variable components is that adjectives frequently appear in these positions;3)Both of the two constructions,as a whole,can function as a component,but sometimes yue(越)A(the X-er)and yue(越)B(the Y-er)may appear to be different components;4)Ellipsis is the shared phenomenon of the two constructions.2.In the aspect of constructional meanings,1)Both of the two constructions are supposed to bear covariational relation that can be further classified into normal covariation and abnormal covariation;2)As two covariational constructions,they can express conditional meaning and causation meaning;3)Not all constituents are allowed to be A,B,X and Y,and they are constrained by the constructions they belong to.When the variable components are adjectives,they have to be variable.Differences between yue(越)A yue(越)B construction and the X-er,the Y-er construction are also observed.1.As for their constructional features,1)yue(越)is anadverbial conjunction,but the is a complementizer,a marker put at the beginning of a sentence;2)Variable components A and B are more flexible in their lexical categories,while X and Y are constrained by the comparative forms in English;3)Co-occurring with certain markers such as negation markers,conditional markers and transitional markers,seems to be a phenomenon unique to yue(越)A yue(越)B construction,but inversion is a distinct feature in the X-er,the Y-er construction.2.In terms of their constructional constraints,perfective aspect is banned in yue(越)A yue(越)B construction,and counterfactual tense is not allowed in the X-er,the Y-er construction.