A Comparative Study On Representations Of Realization Events Of Obtaining Verbs "Qiǎng" And "Snatch"

In recent years,realization events have become hot topics.Scholars have mainly conducted research on the lexicalization patterns of realization events,but very few studies have comprehensively and empirically investigated the event integration,lexicalization pattern,and morpho-syntactic structure of realization events.Employing Talmy’s realization event theory,this thesis explores the similarities and differences of the representations of realization events of obtaining verbs “qiǎng”and “snatch”.The study aims to address:(1)the characteristics of the event integration in Chinese and English realization events and their similarities and differences;(2)the lexicalization patterns of “qiǎng” and “snatch” and their similarities and differences;(3)the characteristics of the morpho-syntactic structure of Chinese and English realization events and their similarities and differences.Drawing on Modern Chinese sub-corpus of the Center for Chinese Linguistics PKU(CCL)and the Corpus of Contemporary American English(COCA),this study retrieved “qiǎng” and “snatch” respectively to obtain sentences containing realization events.Through classification and counting,the author compared and analyzed the similarities and differences of the representations of Chinese and English realization events.The study has these findings:(1)Chinese and English realization events show similar ways of event integration.The realization event can be regarded as the metaphorical expression of caused-motion events.There are three main ways to express[Realization] of the core schema: [Realization of transfer of ownership],[Realization of change of state],and [Realization of change of location].However,the degree of event integration in English is relatively high,and several [Association functions] can be integrated into a realization event.(2)The results support Talmy’s hypothesis that Modern Chinese is a strong S-language in encoding realization events.In Chinese,the verb-complement constructions are often used to express the meaning of [Realization].The action verbs are seldom used to express the meaning of [Realization].When action verbs express [Realization],they tend to co-occur with the tense auxiliary “了(le)” to confirm the occurrence and achievement of the event.In contrast,the lexicalization pattern of English presents a mixed type of S-language and V-language,because action verbs,verbal phrases and resultatives are used to express [Realization].Notably,the occurrence or achievement of events can be expressed through the inflection of verbs.(3)For the morpho-syntactic expressions,the sentence structure “NP1 + V-R/VR + NP2”exists in both English and Chinese and the proportion of this sentence structure is high.There are special sentence structures in Chinese and English respectively.There is the double-object sentence structure “V-R/VR + NP2 + NP3” in Chinese,while there is the sentence structure “NP1 + V-NP2-R” in English.This study attempts to explore the reasons for the similarities and differences of Chinese and English realization events from two aspects.From the perspective of event representation,people have similar perception and experiences,and their event integration and expressions show similarities.However,people from different cultural backgrounds have different thinking patterns.Chinese speakers pay attention to harmony and symmetry,and use disyllabic verb-complement constructions to represent the realization events.English speakers use action verbs that conflate [Realization]meanings to represent realization events.From the perspective of language typology,Chinese is an analytical language that lacks inflection,and uses verb-complement constructions to express [Realization] meanings with function words.Therefore,Chinese presents an S-language type.English is an analytical-synthetic language,using verbal phrases,resultatives and verbs to express [Realization] meanings.Therefore,English presents a mixed type of S-language and V-language.