A Cognitive Study Of The English Resultative Construction

Because of the complex relationship between semantics and syntax,the English resultative construction,which largely exists in language,has been the hot spot in various linguistic fields.Previous studies have made great achievement for the studies of the English resultative construction from various views.However,there is little research concerning the syntactic,semantic features and the issue of productivity.Therefore,the study is devoted to revealing the syntactic and semantic features,as well as licensing conditions for the English resultative construction from a cognitive perspective.In view of this situation,the study will address three questions:1)What are syntactic features of the English resultative construction?2)What are semantic features of the English resultative construction?3)What are licensing conditions for the English resultative construction?Through our analysis based on event structure theory and construction grammar theory,the major findings are as follows: 1)The syntactic features are illustrated as follows: verbs in the English resultative construction present the characteristics of syntactic transitivity,even intransitive verbs in traditional grammar;the postverbal NPs in the case of nonsubcategorized object are not argument of the verbs but argument added by the construction,whereas the postverbal NPs servingas the real object of transitive verbs are argument of the verbs;the resultative phrases that denote the resultant state can be AP,PP,Particle and NP;there is collocational preference between the resultative phrases and the verb.2)The semantic features are illustrated as: the semantic foundation of the English resultative construction is related to the humanly relevant scenes in which an instigator causes something to change a state or location;the English resultative construction also shows a characteristic of polysemy;the semantic orientation of the resultative construction should be Object-oriented.3)Semantic licensing condition for the English resultative construction can be formulated as: there must be an action-result process in an event.The verbal event has to lead to a result state for the Object.The result state can derive either immediately from a physical action chain or from an action chain conceptualized out of a causal chain of events;syntactic licensing condition for the English resultative construction can formulated as: the resultative phrases are obligatory in the English resultative construction which syntactically express the result state,and if the resultative phrase is omitted,resultative sentences will be not legal.This thesis takes the English resultative construction as the research object,and try to develop a further analysis to the syntactic and semantic features from a cognitive perspective.The findings of the research can not only provide reference value for the teaching of resultativeconstruction,but also be helpful for translation research.