A Study On Chinese V-hei Resultative Construction Within The Framework Of Construction Grammar

Chinese resultative construction(Chinese RC)is a special Chinese grammatical phenomenon.Syntactically,Chinese RC is a sentence pattern composed of a predicate verb denoting an action followed by a complement verb/adjective describing result.Semantically,it depicts a complex event consisting of a causing sub-event and a result sub-event.It is characterized with high productivity,wide distribution,great diversity in sentence patterns and complex semantic-orientation of its complement.Thus,it have always drawn great attention of many linguists and researchers.In the past,most of the studies have taken Chinese resultative constructions as a whole and ignored the case study of it.Therefore,this study adopts Goldberg's(1995)construction grammar as the theoretical framework,and takes Chinese V-hei resultative construction as the research object to explore its classification,constructional meanings and argument realization mechanism.The subject of Chinese V-hei resultative construction can be the agent,the patient,the object,the tool and other semantic roles of the verb,and even has no semantic relation with the verb.According to the semantic relation between the subject and the verb and the semantic orientation of the resultative complement,this thesis divides Chinese V-hei resultative construction into seven sub-constructions,four of which are object-oriented RC and three of which are subject-oriented RC.Although all Chinese V-hei resultative constructions contain the causative meaning,there are differences in the concrete meaning of each sub-construction and the way of argument realization.Besides,an instantiation of one sub-construction can be transformed into another sub-construction,that is to say,the same event can be expressed by various sub-construction,among which different roles are prominent.In the view of construction,argument structure is determined by construction,and the realization of argument is realized via the interaction between the argumentroles licensed by the construction and the semantic role assigned by the verb.English resultative construction involves two mechanisms for argument realization by following the Semantic Coherence Principle: fusion when two semantically compatible roles integrate and sole contribution when the construction is the sole provider for an argument.However,compared with its counterpart in English,Chinese V-hei resultative construction has specific features in syntax,semantics and constraints.The argument realization of V-hei resultative construction violates the Semantic Coherence Principle.Apart from the two mechanisms mentioned above,it recruits another two mechanisms: merging when two semantically incompatible roles integrate and unification when roles bearing no semantic relation with the verb integrate with the argument roles of the construction.The current research has important theoretical and practical significance.On the one hand,the study verifies the applicable value of construction grammar in the analysis of Chinese resultative construction.On the other hand,this study is helpful to the teaching of Chinese as a second language.