Diachronic Semantic Changes And Constructionalization Of English Time-away Construction-a Corpus-based Study

The English Time-away construction is one of the typical types in construction grammar.Although there have been some achievements in terms of descriptive study,there still lacks empirical support for its diachronic changes and quantitatively statistical support.Under the framework of diachronic construction grammar and constructionalization,the study is based on the Corpus of Historical American English(COHA)quantitatively and qualitatively.By means of variability-based neighbor clustering and diachronic distinctive collexeme analysis,the study investigates the diachronic semantic changes and constructionalization of English Time-away construction.Major findings are presented as follows.English Time-away construction is clustered into four periods,respectively: 1815 ~ 1855,1865 ~ 1915,1925 ~ 1985 and 1995 ~ 2005,crossing a time span of 200 years from 1810s~2000s with unceasingly increase of semantic category.Besides the expression of “waste” and “consumption” with verbs of an ongoing state entering into this construction,it gradually forms two main categories: the activity interpretation and the static interpretation.Newly emergent prototypical meaning can be formed in the Time-away construction because of the occurrence of verbs expressing distance and shift.During the diachronic development of the Time-away construction,the compositionality of Time-away construction changes since neoanalysis occurs in both form and meaning so as to motivate constructionalization.Due to the increasing communicative needs,conventionality is formed in the frequent use of Time-away construction,which is one of motivations of constructionalization.The study demonstrates the power of high productivity of Time-away construction.Besides,metonymy and analogization are mechanisms of coercing lexical meaning by constructional meaning towards action,manner,state,result and so on,which offsets the shortage of the former researches of single rationale.This study provides empirical analysis for the diachronic study of the English Time-away construction.At the same time,through the quantitative analysis of the real linguistic data in the Corpus of Historical American English,it offers objective and reliable support for showing the evolution of Time-away construction and its diachronic changes.