A Cognitive Study On Tough Constructions In English And Chinese

Tough constructions are a kind of raising constructions,which have always been a hot topic in theoretical linguistics.The researches under the framework of Generative Grammar pay more attention to the derivation of tough constructions,but they pose a challenge to the theory itself,which violates many principles,such as theta theory,case theory,locality conditions.What’s more,formal linguists think that the alternations between tough constructions are completely synonymous.This contrasts with Cognitive Linguistics.Cognitive Linguistics advocates the non-transformational view,and emphasizes the superficial generalization of language structures,and holds that different forms have different meanings.We agree with this view,but adopt the spirit of Cognitive Grammar.Combined with the specific language facts,this thesis firstly makes a descriptive study of English and Chinese tough predicates from the perspective of conceptual semantics and autonomy and dependency relation.We find that English and Chinese tough predicates have the following common points:1)the full semantic manifestation of tough predicates inherently requires a processual component.In tough constructions,2)the predicates are acted by the relational components,which profiles two schematic substructures which can be elaborated as trajector and landmark,respectively.3)the object of the internal verb can appear in the matrix subject position.The differences are that in English tough constructions,the impersonal it can act as a setting subject,while there is no corresponding phenomenon in Chinese tough constructions.Besides object raising,the subject of the internal verb or both subject and object of the internal verb can also be raised to the sentence initial position in Chinese,but not in English.Secondly,on the basis of the similarities and differences,combining the characteristics of the two languages themselves,we find that a unified account can be made under the cognitive reference point theory.Specifically,the NP at the beginning of the sentence has inherent cognitive prominence in English and Chinese tough constructions,which can be used as a reference point to make mental contact with the active zone.The setting subject it indicates an abstract field,which can also function as a reference point.In Chinese tough constructions,when both subject and object of the internal verb are raised to the sentence initial position at the same time,they form a topic construction,[topic [subject + VP]],which can be dealt with uniformly under the reference point theory.Finally,we hold that different forms of tough constructions have different semantic characteristics,which is the representation of lexical polysemy and conforms to principles of no synonymy of grammatical forms.