A Study Of Nature, Types And Motivations Of Chinese And English "NA Quantitative Construction"

Based on self-built integrated Construction Grammar and authoritative corpora,this thesis attempts to make a multi-dimensional and comprehensive comparative analysis of Chinese and English “NA Quantitative Construction” from cognitive perspective.Furthermore,this thesis tries to find out the similarities and differences between Chinese and English “NA Quantitative Construction” in nature,types and motivations by adopting quantitative and qualitative methods.Major findings are summarized as follows:?1?The nature of Chinese and English “NA Quantitative Construction” is embodied in quantity nature,quantity linguistic expression and quantity type shift.Quantity nature presents in semantic,syntactic and pragmatic quantities.Quantity linguistic expression of Chinese and English “NA Quantitative Construction” is chiefly through lexical and grammatical means.Quantity type shift of Chinese and English “NA Quantitative Construction” occurs when “N” is a noun and forms “NA Quantitative Construction” with non-spatial dimension adjectives.When“N” is a strong spatial noun,the noun shifts from spatial quantity to trait quantity;when “N” is a weak spatial noun,quantity type shift is uncertain,which is related to personal cognition.In Chinese “NA Quantitative Construction”,about 24% is weak spatial nouns.In other words,there is about 24% uncertainty in quantity type shift of Chinese “NAQuantitative Construction”.In English “NA Quantitative Construction”,nearly 40% is weak spatial nouns.Therefore the uncertainty in quantity type shift of English “NAQuantitative Construction” is almost 40%.?2?According to the tightness of internal structure,Chinese and English “NA Quantitative Construction” can be divided into phrase and word-e1.The internal structure of phrase “NA Quantitative Construction” is loose and allows inserting of other components,which can be further classified into ascertainable phrase “NA Quantitative Construction”,unascertainedascertainable phrase “NA Quantitative Construction” and unascertained phrase “NA Quantitative Construction” by quantitative characteristics.Chinese ascertainable phrase “NA Quantitative Construction” has 4 structural types and English has 5;Chinese unascertainedascertainable phrase “NA Quantitative Construction” has 11 structural types and English has 3;Chinese unascertainable phrase “NA Quantitative Construction” has 24 structural types and English has 5.The internal structure of word-e “NA Quantitive Construction” is rigious and does not allow inserting other components,which can be subdivided by the dimensions of adjectives.Chinese and English share 5 kinds of word-e “NA Quantitative Construction”.Chinese has 2 kinds of unique word-e “NAQuantitative Construction”,and English has one.?3?Based on self-built integrated Construction Grammar and quantity type shift,the motivations of Chinese and English word-e “NA Quantitative Construction” follow this rule: if the quantitative characteristic of noun and adjective is consistent,there is no quantity type shift in cognition,then this word-e “NA Quantitative Construction” is generated by conceptual metaphor;if the quantitative characteristic of noun and adjective is inconsistent,there is quantity type shift in cognition,then this word-e “NA Quantitative Construction” is generated by conceptual integration.When the noun combines with spatial dimension adjective forming word-e “NAspace Quantitative Construction”,the quantitative characteristic of the noun is consistent with the adjective and does not need quantity type shift.Therefore,word-e “NAspace Quantitative Construction” is generated by conceptual metaphor.When the noun combines with non-spatial dimension adjective forming word-e “NA_non-space Quantitative Construction”,there are two situations: if the noun with strong spatial quantity characteristic,the quantitative characteristic of the noun is inconsistent with the adjective,the noun needs quantity type shift to match with adjective.In this situation,word-e “NA_non-space Quantitative Construction” is generated by conceptual integration.If the noun with weak spatial quantitative characteristic,the quantity type shift is influenced by individual's cognition.If it is assumed that the spatial quantity of the noun cannot suppress trait quantity,the noun exhibits stronger trait quantity than spatial quantity,which makes the quantitative characteristic of the noun consistent with the subsequent non-spatial dimension adjective,then the word-e “NA_non-space Quantitative Construction” is generated by conceptual metaphor.If it is assumed that the spatial quantity of the noun suppresses trait quantity,the exhibition of trait quantity of the noun is weaker than spatial quantity,which makes the quantitative characteristic of the noun inconsistent with thesubsequent non-spatial dimension adjective,then the word-e “NA_non-space Quantitative Construction” is generated by conceptual integration.Thus,word-e “NA_non-space Quantitative Construction” can be generated by conceptual metaphor or conceptual integration.