A Corpus-Based Study On Constructionalization And Constructional Changes Of The Way Construction

With the rise of Construction Grammar theory,all these years construction research has been soaring.The way construction is a special argument structure construction in English,which attracts the attention of scholars at home and abroad.Most researchers focus on synchronic research on the way construction.Synchronic research issues are roughly divided into several aspects: the definition of the way construction,the semantic interpretations of the way construction,the productivity of the way construction,and verb access mechanism of the way construction.From the perspective of diachronic research,although less scholars discusses grammaticalization and semantic evolution of the way construction,which is only a single-level discussion of the form or meaning of the way construction and splits the form-meaning pairing of the construction.It is contradictory to the basic definition of grammar(form-meaning pairing).This thesis believes that the evolution of construction is the co-evolution of the form-meaning pairing,rather than a single level of evolution.Therefore,this thesis adopts the theory of constructional changes and constructionalization(Constructionalization is the creation of new form-meaning paring,while constructional change is no leading to a new form-meaning paring without change of both form and meaning at the same time.).Constructional changes and constructionalization are proposed by Traugott and Trousdale(2013)to further explore constructional changes and constructionalization of the way construction under the framework of diachronic construction grammar.At the same time,this thesis uses Word2 vec and SPSS to analyze data which is from COHA,COCA,BNC and HC.This thesis tries to answer the following three questions: 1.What is the process of constructional changes and constructionalization of the way construction? 2.What are the mechanisms of constructional changes and constructionalization of the way construction? 3.What are the factors that affect the constructional changes and constructionalization of the way construction?Then related research results are showed as follows.1.The way construction has undergone a total of two constructionalizations,and the characteristics of the third structuralization have already appeared.From the perspective of the whole evolution process,the evolution of the way construction has a linear characteristic,which is different from the previous research result that presents the network expansion characteristic of the way construction.The study further finds that the expected productivity of the way construction has been declining,which also shows that the evolution of the way construction has reached the late stage of evolution and is maturing.Therefore,this thesis predicts that the third constructionalization will become the final evolution of the way construction.2.From the perspective of the meaning of the way construction,the family similarity mechanism runs through the entire evolution process.It is the main mechanism of the way construction evolution at the level of construction meaning,and its performance characteristic is continuity.The node connecting the different meanings of the way construction is the metonymy mechanism.The metonymy mechanism is the major mechanism of the way constructionalization at the level of construction meaning,and its performance is instantaneity.From the level of form,the intransitive verb that enters the way construction is neoanalyzed as a transitive verb chielfly through analogization mechanism.3.The factors of affecting the way construction mainly include its own structure,productivity of the way construction,the high-frequency use of the way construction,its stability and contextual factors.The study further finds that the high-frequency use of the way construction and its contextual factors have the greatest influence to constructional changes and constructionalization of the way construction,followed by its own structure and its productivity.The least impact on the way constructional changes and constructionalization is its stability,and the stability factor is only applicable to the use of high frequency.In the case of low frequency use,it is not significantly affecting the way constructional changes and constructionalization.This thesis analyzes in detail the evolution of way construction and its influencing factors.Moreover,the word similarity is used to verify the rationality of family similarity mechanism and metonymy mechanism in the study of way constructional changes and constructionalization.At the same time,the research in this thesis finds that the evolutionary feature is characterized by linear evolution rather than the network expansion characteristics of previous researchers in the way construction.Based on the analysis of the twice constructionalization,it is further predicted that the third constructionalization will become the final evolution in the way constructional changes and constructionalization.