| English resultative construction is a kind of common language phenomenon,and it is also a basic type of argument structure construction.Generally speaking,it consists of main verb and resultative complement with the meaning of “X causes Y to become Z”,and its syntactic form is usually represented in [SUBJ V(OBJ)XP],where XP can be an adjective phrase,a preposition phrase,or a noun phrase.Among them,resultative construction with an adjective as a resultative phrase takes up most.Not a few scholars conduct studies on it mainly from the syntactic,event structure,pragmatic and constructional perspectives.Recent years,researches on resultative construction have been gradually moved on to resultative phrases.Such as Hans C.Boas(2003),Li Ji'an & Cai Yanyan(2009),Luo Siming & Wang wenbin & Hong Ming(2010),Zhang zhen'ai & Li Manting(2014).These studies mainly focus on the comparison between Chinese and English resultative phrases,and the analysis of the constraints of adjective resultative phrases,but few studies concentrate on the collostructional verbs with adjective resultative phrases.Especially Hans C.Boas(2003),the analysis of the outcome he obtains merely focuses on the verbs associated with the given resultative phrase occurring in the target construction without specific analysis and classification of the verbs.In order to figure out the distribution features of verbs associated with certain resultative phrases,collostructional analysis developed by Stefanowitsch & Gries(2003)is applied in the present thesis to identify the association between V slot and the target resultative construction synchronically.The application of R software can predict the collostruction strength between verb collexemes and the target resultative construction accurately,and help to find out the interactional relation between verb collexemes and the target construction objectively and correctly.Therefore,with COCA as a database and within the framework of construction grammar and usage-based theory,the present study tends to analyze the interactional relation between V slot and the target construction from the perspective of collostructional analysis.R software and Fisher Exact Test are applied here.In termsof Cristiano Broccias(2004),22 adjectives act as resultative phrases frequently in BNC.Among them,the occurrence of dead is 431,the occurrence of apart is 407,the occurrence of open is 395,the occurrence of shut is 207,and the occurrence of clean is 102(As is mentioned on P37).Based on this statistics,the occurrence of dead in the target construction is the highest,and the features of it are the most typical.Thus,the study takes it as a case,and aims to identify the distribution features of the verb collexemes in the V slot and tries to work out the following questions:(1)What classes of verbs in the verb slot are more strongly associated with English resultative construction with an adjective dead as a resultative phrase?(2)What are the characteristics of the verbs occurring in the target English resultative construction?(3)What are the semantic features of the target English resultative construction?(4)What is the formation mechanism of the target construction?Major findings are listed as follows:(1)There are 30 verbs occurring in the verb slot with the given dead resultative phrase.Among them,go tops number 1 with the frequency of 332 and then shoot,drop,stop,fall,kill,get,strike,make,etc.But the high frequency of verbs in the target construction does not mean the strong association strength with the given construction,that is to say,there is no obvious interrelation between occurring frequency and collostructional strength.Text the total frequency of the target construction occurring in COCA,the total frequency of verbs occurring in the target construction,and the chosen 30 verbs,then put them into R software to calculate the collostructional strength between verbs and the target construction.The outcome shows that go has the strongest collostructional strength with the given construction,and then shoot,drop,stop,fall,kill,strike,get,knock,cut,make,etc.(2)In terms of Levin(1993),the 30 verbs that show strong collostructional strength with the target construction can be classified into seven groups: verbs ofcontact by impact 9(beat,hit,kick,knock,smack,strike,bite,blow,toss),verbs of change of state 7(sink,topple,slump,get,make,collapse,stop),verbs of killing 4(kill,drown,shoot,stab),verbs of motion 4(go,fall,drop,zap),verbs of contact:touch verbs 2(pinch,prod),verbs of cutting 2(cut,crush),verbs involving the body 2(choke,suffocate).This classification reveals that the usage of contact-by-impact verbs and change-of-state verbs occupy the most and take up 30% and 23%respectively.The former refers to verbs that are impacted by moving one entity,and the latter refers to verbs that are related to change of state.This reveals that verbs usually express the meaning of motion and state change in the target resultative construction.The usage-based theory holds that language structure arises from language use,and grammar comes from usage.The formation of grammar is a dynamic developing change process.The frequency of verbs occurring in the target construction affects their external representation.As they occur more frequently,they are more likely to be entrenched in specific grammatical patterns.Human psychology is embodied in language use,and the occurring frequency of the usage determines its entrenchment in human's network.(3)After conducting the cluster analysis of the given construction with the help of R software,four clusters are obtained.Firstly,there is a cluster of change-of-state verbs,such as make,collapse,get,stop,slump,and topple.Among them,make,collapse,get and topple can only be used in active voice,while slump and stop can be used in both active and passive voices;Secondly,there is a cluster of killing,cutting,motion,and touch verbs,such as killing verbs shoot,kill,stab;cutting verbs cut;motion verbs go,fall,drop,zap;touch verbs pinch and prod.Among them,go,zap,stab,drop,fall,pinch,and prod can only be used in active voice,while shoot,kill and cut can occur in both active and passive voices;Thirdly,there is a cluster of contact-by-impact verbs,such as smack,beat,kick,blow,hit,knock,and strike.Among them,smack,beat,kick,hit,and knock can only be used in active voice,while blow and strike can occur in both active and passive voices;Fourthly,there is a cluster of suffocate,change-of-state,contact-by-impact,cutting,and killing verbs,such as choke,suffocate,sink,bite,toss,crush,and drown.Among them,the suffocate verb suffocate,change-of-state verb sink,contact-by-impact verbs bite and toss,and killing verb drown can only occur in passive sentence pattern,while the suffocate verb choke and cutting verb crush can occur in active voice.In addition,almost all of the subjectreferent of the verbs is human.Compared with the subject referent of human,there only exist a few verbs whose subject referent is animate.Few verbs exist whose subject referent is inanimate.There are also a few verbs whose subject referent can be human,animate,or inanimate.Usually,a few modifiers can occur before verbs to express the manner of them.(4)The formation of the target English resultative construction is related to the occurring frequency of verbs in the target construction and the usage frequency of the target construction in everyday communication.In the target English resultative construction with an adjective dead as a resultative phrase,verbs in the V slot have strong association strength with the construction.In COCA,more and more verbs enter the V slot of the target construction,which leads the verbs to have high occurring frequency in the construction.Based on the central idea of usage-based theory,the input frequency of linguistic elements affect the establishment of human's network.Language knowledge comes from language use.With more and more verb collexemes entering the verb slot,the target resultative construction can be built up and occur frequently in English.Therefore,linguistic elements that occur more frequently are deeper entrenched in human's mental grammar compared with those occurring less frequently.In the target construction with an adjective dead as a resultative phrase,verbs that show strong collostructional strength are deeper entrenched in human's mental grammar than those occurring less frequently even those showing repulsion with the target construction.In another word,the formation of resultative construction is closely related to the frequency in usage-based theory. |
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