A Syntactic-semantic Study Of The Over+XP Construction

Based on Goldberg's Construction Grammar and Langacker�s Cognitive Linguistics,the present thesis aims to investigate the syntactic and semantic features of the item over as well as constructions related to it and offer a cognitive linguistics-based account of the related linguistic facts and findings.Research methods adopted in this study mainly include document reading and analysis,corpus data analysis and logical reasoning.Based on relevant theories and careful observation and analysis of 6,000 randomly-selected concordances from the British National Corpus(BNC),the over-construction is classified into three sub-types,i.e.,prepositional,adverbial and adjectival.It is found that the aforementioned three sub-types all belong to dependent structures and the constituents preceding and following it are all autonomous structures.The syntactic study of over-construction mainly comprises analyses of its syntactic structures,syntactic functions and syntactic behaviors.Among them,the syntactic structures include three aspects: the preceding part,the following part and the modifiers of over.The syntactic functions mainly include modifiers(attributive and adverbial)and complements.The prepositional over-construction presents itself in the form of prepositional phrase with over being its head,as encoded by 'over+XP'.The complement XP mainly includes nominal phrases and nominal clauses,which are rich in forms,such as nouns,pronouns,numerals,wh-clauses and present participle clauses.The over-construction can function not only as postpositive attributives of noun phrases but also as adjuncts signifying time,place/position or direction/orientation which often occur at the beginning or the end of sentences.In addition,prepositional over can act as a complement to adjectives,verbs and other prepositions,and can also be complemented by adverbs.Whereas adverbial over mainly functions as a preceding modifier of verbs,adjectives or adverbs(except over itself),it can also act as a complement of verbs.Furthermore,adverbial over can also be followed by adjectives,adverbs or prepositional phrases,functioning as degree,temporal or spatial modifiers respectively.Adjectival over is attributed as a state adjective,functioning as an attributive to modify the following noun/head,i.e.Modifier-Head Construction.Another fact that deserves one�s attention is that the adjective over can appear behind a linking verb as a predicative to modify or specify the subject by offering an explanation to or illustration of it.On the whole,the preceding element of adjective over is usually a noun or pronoun as the subject of a sentence,while the preceding element of prepositional over and adverbial over is mostly a verb,forming a large number of verb-preposition phrases and verb-adverb phrases,which also exemplifies the high productivity of Verb-Particle Construction.Moreover,the over-construction can also be embedded in other higher-level structures like Caused-Motion Construction and Passive Construction,etc.Through careful observation and analysis of the corpus data,this thesis summarizes six types of modifiers which are acceptable in the over-construction: intensifying,directional,attenuating,quantifying,descriptive and focus.The lexical meaning of over is an important foundation for the meaning of 'over+XP' construction.The semantic study of over involves its etymological meaning and semantic features of polysemy,its semantic comparison with above,the interrelations between its different meanings and the cognitive interpretation of its semantic structure.A theme of Cognitive Linguistics is that meaning is embodied and conceptual in nature,which lays the theoretical foundation for the cognitive interpretation offered in this study.This thesis advocates differentiating distinct sense from online meaning,and uses the five criteria proposed by Tyler and Evans(2003)as the methodology to determine the primary sense of over as well as their other two criteria to distinguish the distinct meanings of over.The semantics of prepositional 'over+XP' construction is mainly discussed and its extended adverbial and adjectival usages are also involved.It is found out in the present study that the semantic structure of over is radial,with the direct or indirect extensions from the prototypical sense of expressing spatial relations to the non-spatial senses expressing quantity,manner,time,state and cognitive/emotional domains through such four cognitive mechanisms as metaphorical mapping,experiential inference,reanalysis and pragmatic strengthening,creating a highly motivated and neatly organized semantic structure.Besides,these different meanings of over are rich and interrelated.The semantic shift of over is also found out to be from spatial to non-spatial,from specific to abstract.Such relevant concepts as the reference system,perspective point,the distribution of attention and the TR/LM are also involved in the interpretation of the spatial-oriented semantic relations of over.Finally,it is proved in this study that the 'over+XP' construction is a form-meaning pair which has productivity and embedded recursion.It has diverse syntactic forms and rich meanings.A systematic semantic structure is formed through the extension from spatial domain to other non-spatial domains.There is salient motivation behind the semantic shift,correlation and structure which can be interpreted via metaphors and other cognitive principles.