A Study On English From ADJ₁ To ADJ₂ From The Perspective Of Construction Grammar

In English structure from A to B,the variable elements A and B can be nouns,adjectives,numbers,and so on.Most previous studies on English structure from A to B are from the perspective of formal semantics and focus on the nouns in it instead of the adjectives.The cognitive semantics,functions,and the cognitive mechanism of from ADJ₁to ADJ₂are not explained in detail.This thesis employs the background assumptions of Construction Grammar and Usage-based Language Theory as well as a qualitative and quantitative research method for investigating the English construction from ADJ₁to ADJ₂.Based on the data extracted from the i Web Corpus,the study aims to solve the following questions:（1）What are the semantic characteristics and the distribution of adjectives in English construction from ADJ₁to ADJ₂?（2）What is the meaning and function of English construction from ADJ₁to ADJ₂?（3）What is the cognitive mechanism of English construction from ADJ₁to ADJ₂?The major findings of this study are listed as follows:（1）From the perspective of the semantic types of adjectives,the adjectives in from ADJ₁to ADJ₂construction fall into seven semantic types.Among them,the adjectives of PHYSICAL PROPERTY account for the largest proportion of 37.84%,followed by the adjectives of VALUE（20.27%）,AGE（17.57%）and DIMENSION（14.86%）.The proportion of adjectives of DIFFICULTY（6.76%）,QUALIFICATION（1.35%）and COLOR（1.35%）are relatively small.In the i Web Corpus,74 constructs of from ADJ₁to ADJ₂construction with the usage frequency of 21693 are found in total,among which the usage frequency of constructs with adjectives of PHYSICAL PROPERTY（8690）is the highest.Although the proportion of adjectives of AGE（17.57%）is larger than that of adjectives of DIMENSION（14.86%）,the usage frequency of constructs with adjectives of AGE（1965）is lower than the ones with adjectives of DIMENSION（3068）.From the perspective of semantic relation between ADJ₁and ADJ₂,three types of relations are found:Antonym（75.68%）,complementary（18.92%）and comparison（5.41%）.The antonyms are divided into four sub-types:polar antonyms（76.79%）,overlapping antonyms（16.07%）,equipollent antonyms（3.57%）and the fourth type（3.57%）.（2）From ADJ₁to ADJ₂can express the range of physical property,the range of value,the range of dimension,the range of age,the range of difficulty,the range of qualification and the range of color.Complementaries strictly bisect the range described by the construction,while antonyms do not.Antonyms and complementaries can enter the construction in two ways and express meaning in opposite directions,but the adjectives with the relation of comparison can only enter in one way.In the 500 sentences randomly selected in the 21693 sentences,the sentences where from ADJ₁to ADJ₂occurring with verbs of change of state account for the largest proportion of 84.20%.The construction always describes entities instead of people.To sum up,the typical function of the construction is defined as the range of change of an entity or some entities between two physical properties with the relation of antonym.This study also finds that from bad to worse has the highest usage frequency among all the constructs and go from bad to worse has been an entrenched idiom in English.（3）In order to deal with the semantic conflicts between the construction and the adjectives,coercion on the one hand foregrounds the schematic domain of adjectives and backgrounds the content domain of adjectives;On the other hand,coercion makes the bidirectional meaning entailed in the semantic relation between ADJ₁and ADJ₂become unidirectional.When adjectives enter from A to B,metaphor of the constructional meaning happens,which projects from the source domain SPACE to the target domain STATE.As to the relationship between from A to B and from ADJ₁to ADJ₂,these two constructions connect through instance link.The former can be the motivation of the latter,which is an instance of the former.The senses of from ADJ₁to ADJ₂can be regarded as the metaphorical extension of the spatial meaning of from A to B.The significance of this study is as follows:First,corpus-based research makes the results more convincing;Second,this study is a supplement to the studies on English spatial relation construction so that the rules of this phenomenon can be revealed more clearly;Third,this study helps English learners use this construction better,which is valuable to English learning and teaching.