A Research On Into-Causative Construction’s Nodes And Links From A Usage-Based Perspective

Into-causative construction is a special causative argument construction which contains two interactive verb slots.It may contain some sense of force or coerce(Hunston&Francis,2000).For over 10 years researchers have made great endeavour to probe into into-causative construction under the framework of Goldberg’s(1995)Cognitive Construction Grammar.Issues about synchronic properties of into-causative construction like construction meaning and how causative verbs relate to this construction have been studied in detail.For diachronic research,there are some of them.Researchers are paying their attention to innovative usages of into-causative construction.However,depiction and generalization on innovative usages of into-causative construction alone could not dynamically and intuitively present diachronic properties of it,which include semantic changes,creation and death of nodes in constructional network,and changes of links.To solve problems above,this research,applying the cognition of constructionalization and constructional change of Traugott&Trousdale(2013),will take into-causative construction as a constructional network consisting of nodes and links.Based on usage-based model,this research would observe the influence of usage on this construction family,especially nodes and links in it.This study would also trace the dynamic development of into-causative construction and visualize it.This research tries to find answers of three questions presented as follows:1)What verbs occur in the causative verb slot in into-causative construction?How could they be classified?2)How many sub-nodes does into-causative construction have?And how to dissect the development of into-causative construction?3)Do all sub-nodes of into-causative construction develop in balance?How does their development construct the diachronic network of into-causative construction?In order to answer the questions above,this study takes COHA(Corpus of Historical American English)as the data source,and uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to study the diachronic development of the into-cause construction.To be more specific,this study classifies causative verbs in the slot of into-causative construction according to the "Preliminary Survey of English Verb Classification and Alternation"(Beth Levin,1993),which ensures the objectivity and pertinence of verb semantic recognition;this research diachronically segments into-causative construction with the help of the diachronic staged calculation method VNC(variability-based neighbor clustering),which ensures the rationality and systematization of the segmentation;this thesis conducts collostructional analysis on into-causative construction in R software,which ensures scientific and verifiable statistical data.The answers could be presented as below.(1)Based on English Verb Classes and Alternations A Preliminary Investigation(Beth Levin,1993),there are totally 132 kinds of verbs that have appeared for 6245 times in the causative verb slot in into-causative construction.The top 3:Psych-verb:Amuse verbs,Verbs of Removing:Verbs of Possessional Deprivation:Cheat and Verbs of Communication:Talk verbs make over a half of the total 6245 tokens,manifesting the fact that the distribution of causative verbs in into-causative construction assumes a quality of intensity.(2)Making reference to the categorizations of previous studies,this study categorizes 132 types of causative verbs in into-causative construction into 6 categories and respectively into-causative construction family into 6 sub-construction family:POSITION AND MOTION,COGNITION,PHYSICAL FORCE,COMMUNICATION,CHANGE and APPEAR TO DISAPPEAR.Psych-verb:Amuse verbs,Verbs of Removing:Verbs of Possessional Deprivation:Cheat and Verbs of Communication:Talk verbs are respectively the most frequent kind of causative verbs in COGNITION,POSITION AND MOTION and COMMUNICATION,which suggests the fact that instances of into-causative construction intensely exist in these three sub-construction.The result of VNC recommends 5 clusters including 1820s-1830s,1840s-1860s,1870s-1900s,1910s-1930s,1940s-2010s.Here one period is special:1820s-1830s.Compared with other periods,this period has low level of tokens per million words,and only spans 20 years while other periods do 40 years or even 80 years.So the exclusion of this period does not spoil the substance of the whole database but helps to dismiss a lot of noise(Gries and Hilpert,2012).So the final periodization of into-causative construction should be as follows:1840s-1860s,1870s-1900s,1910s-1930s and 1940s-2010s.In the first period,the CHANGE type(like soften)and COGNITION type(like scare)are attracted by the into-causative construction,while the COMMUNICATION type(like talk)is repulsed.In this period,the into-causative construction has a neutral tendency and tends to choose manner-neutral causative verbs.As far as the causative meaning is concerned,in this period,causative meaning exists more in causative verbs.In the second period,in addition to the CAHNGE type that is still attracted,there is also POSITION AND MOTION type(like trick)that is attracted.Among all 6 types,the POSITION AND MOTION type has the highest collocstruction strength.In this period,the into-causative construction shows a negative tendency,and it tends to choose verbs with negative causative meaning,such as deceive.At the same time,as the more verbs without causative meaning are attracted by the into causative construction,the causative meaning of this construction gradually transfers to the construction itself.In the third period,the negative tendency of into-causative construction reaches the peak.The only two types of verbs that are attracted are PHYSICAL FORCE(like force)and POSITION AND MOTION,and APPEAR TO DISAPPEAR(like erupt)and COMMUNICATION are repulsed.Besides the fact that POSITION AND MOTION continues to be attracted,PHYSICAL FORCE,which has an even stronger negative meaning is the most attracted type.The fourth period witnesses the "communicationization" of into-causative construction.The COMMUNICATION type that was repulsed in the previous three stages becomes the most attracted category in this period,and the other attracted type is APPEAR TO DISAPPEAR.It is worth noting that these two categories are both manner-neutral.Obviously,after two periods of negative tendency,into-causative construction shows neutral tendency in the fourth stage.The other four categories were repulsed.The causative meaning has basically shifted to the construction itself,as the CHANGE type has transferred from the most attracted type in the first period to the most repulsed one in the fourth period.(3)The changes of 6 categories or 6 sub-families of into-causative construction and the semantic change of this construction naturally generate the changing network of into-causative construction.The node properties of the network could be described from token frequency,emotion bias and collocation strength.The link properties of the network are embodied in two levels:vertical link and horizontal link.Vertical links represent the inheritance relationship between different constructions at different levels of abstraction,while horizontal links represent the similarity of different constructs at the same level of abstraction.In 1840s-1860s,into-causative construction tended to choose causative verbs of CHANGE category while it repulses causative verbs of COMMUNICATION category.During this period,the causative meaning is carried partially by causative verbs,and into-causative construction alone could not indicate causative meaning in some cases.In the constructional network,the central part into-causative family is nodes with manner-neutral verbs,which means that in the first period,into-causative construction tends to be manner-neutral.This distribution of nodes could be caused by the immaturity of into-causative construction.During this period,into-causative construction has not assume the ability to carry the causative meaning alone.So verbs which themselves carry causative meaning are attracted.Things change for the second period of into-causative construction.POSITION AND MOTION,which is repulsed by into-causative construction in the first period,is the one mostly attracted with collostruction strength of 2.195038.And COGNITION and CHANGE follow POSITION AND MOTION with collostruction strength of 1.588574 and 1.308601 respectively.During this time,negative causative verbs are attracted by into-causative construction more.And with the collostruction strength of into-causative construction descending into 1.308601,the causative meaning starts to transfer from causative verbs to into-causative construction itself.In the constructional network,the central part of into-causative construction is occupied by nodes with negative causative verbs,which indicates the reigning of negative causative verbs.In this period,into-causative construction starts to carry the causative meaning partially.So instead of verbs carrying inherent causative meaning,verbs that show causative potential or tend are attracted more.That is why verbs of POSITION AND MOTION and COGNITION like pressure are attracted more.The third period(1910s-1930s)manifests the development of the relation between PHYSICAL FORCE and into-causative construction.Negative verbs of PHYSICAL FORCE category,compared with those of COGNITION and POSITION AND MOTION which always indicate psychological influence or possession deprivation,are more brute and forceful.CHANGE category during this period does not bear significant attraction relation or repulsion relation with into-causative construction.Into-causative construction assumes the ability to carry causative meaning alone in most cases in this period.In constructional network,PHYSICAL FORCE is the center of into-causative construction family,infusing this family a negative bias.In the forth period of into-causative construction,all 6 categories are significantly attracted or repulsed by into-causative construction.The top category,COMMUNICATION bears a spectacular attraction relation with into-causative construction which is shown by the collostruction strength value of 30.818873.APPEAR TO DISAPPEAR is also attracted by into-causative construction.It is safe to say that the forth period witnesses communicationization of into-causative construction.And among 4 categories repulsed by into-causative construction,3 indicate negative emotion.So the forth period is also the period in which into-causative construction turns from a construction apt to choose negative causative verbs to a one which tends to co-occur with manner-neutral causative verbs.In the network of into-causative construction of this period,neutral nodes occupy the center of this family.During this period,into-causative construction assume the ability to indicate causative meaning alone.The maturity of the into-causative construction leads to the fact that it does not need to choose verbs with inherent causative meaning or verbs with causative potential.Therefore,the verb selection of the into-causing construction at this stage is less restricted by causative meanings,the negative tendency of the into-causing construction is weakened,and the neutral verbs such as talk are more attracted.This study tries to find dynamic properties of into-causative construction to enrich diachronic studies of this construction.By utilizing collostructional analysis and VNC,this study also aims to promote quantitative and empirical research of Construction Grammar.The demonstration of exploiting constructional network to study diachronic linguisitic facts could help to set a precedent for future construction research.