A Construction Grammar Approach To The Modern Chinese "Da(?)+N" Construction

"Da(?)" is traditionally regarded as an isolated word,and researchers usually pay their attention to its meaning evolution from the perspective of semantics,syntax and cognitive linguistics.However,the meanings of the word "Da(?)"are evolved with diversity,so that it is difficult for people to infer the meaning of the whole from the parts of the "Da(?)+N" construction.Additionally,its dozens of meanings make it more difficult for people to understand the meanings of the "Da(?)+N" construction.Construction Grammar was spurred on with the development of Cognitive Semantics,which aims to account for the defining properties of all kinds of linguistic expressions and to study language in its totality.According to Construction Grammar,a construction is a form-meaning pairing in which either an aspect of form or aspect of meaning is non-predicable.Since the meanings of the "Da(?)+N" construction are non-predicable by summing up its components,the present study considers it as a construction group.This construction group contains different sub-constructions.In this thesis,we will take one of the constructions Generative "Da(?)+N" as our research object,and classify it into two sub-constructions: Consciously Generative "Da(?)+N"construction and Unconsciously Generative "Da(?)+N" construction.From the perspective of construction grammar,this study attempts to study the"Da(?)+N" as a whole,instead of a combination of an isolated verb and different nouns.The study aims to answer the following questions:(1)What is the meaning and classification of the "Da(?)+N" construction group?(2)What are the construction meanings and features of the Consciously Generative "Da(?)+N" construction and the Unconsciously Generative "Da(?)+N" construction?(3)What are the cognitive mechanisms and evolutionary motivations of the Consciously Generative "Da(?)+N"construction and the Unconsciously Generative "Da(?)+N" construction? The main findings are as follows:First,"Da(?)+N" is a construction group stored in human mind,mainlyconsisting of five sub-constructions.The surface construction meaning is "the occurrence of an action",accordingly people can understand its sub-constructions based on this meaning.Second,the Consciously Generative "Da(?)+N" construction means "to form or generate something consciously",which possesses the semantic features [+hands],[+action],[+consciousness],[+material].Syntactically,it has low productivity and high compositionality.The Unconsciously Generative "Da(?)+N" construction means "to form or generate something unconsciously",which owns the semantic features [-hands],[+action],[-consciousness],[-material].Syntactically,it has no productivity and low compositionality.Both of the two sub-constructions can be used as subjects,predicates and objects in the sentence,and cannot be used in passive sentences.Third,On the one hand,the Consciously Generative "Da(?)+N" construction was evolved through conceptual metonymy and the force schema.On the other hand,the Unconsciously Generative "Da(?)+N" construction was derived through conceptual metaphor.In addition,two reasons can account for the constructional evolution: cultural environment and the economic principle.Although the present study only covers one sub-construction in the "Da(?)+N"construction group,this thesis offers a new theoretical way to the analysis of the word"Da(?)".For one thing,applying Construction Grammar to this tricky word "Da(?)"helps to overcome the shortcomings of previous studies which pay too much attention to its senses.For another,our findings of this study may shed some light on lexicography and language pedagogy.