An Embodied-cognitive Contrastive Study Of English And Chinese “V_catch X” Constructions

“Catch”is a very important body action in the interaction between human beings and the world,which forms the verb of catching.Catching verbs are flexible and productive in daily life,which have certain linguistic research value and practical significance.However,few scholars at home and abroad have made a contrastive study of“V_catchX”in English and Chinese from the perspective of Construction Grammar,and analyzed the Embodied-Cognitive motivation for the formation of the construction.Based on this,this paper aims to take“Na X”,“Take X”,“Zhua X”and“Catch X”construction as specific research objects in order to explain their syntactic,semantic and pragmatic features,and further explore the Embodied-Cognitive motivation behind them.Taking Cognitive Linguistics and Construction Grammar as the theoretical background,this paper attempts to integrate the Event-domain Cognitive Model,Metaphtonymy to build a new theoretical framework--EM Model.Under this theoretical framework,this paper analyzes the similarities and differences between the English and Chinese“V_catchX”constructions from the syntactic,semantic and pragmatic aspects,and further analyzes the Embodied-Cognitive motivation behind these similarities and differences.This paper collects 951“Take X”,811“Catch X”,878“Take X”and 980“Catch X”construction items from BNC and BCC corpus respectively,and analyzes them qualitatively and quantitatively.Research results are shown as follows:Syntactically,the distribution of X category in“na X”and“take X”constructions is similar,including concrete nouns or noun phrases,abstract nouns or noun phrases,and adjectives.The category of nouns in X accounts for the largest proportion,which indicates that both of them emphasize THINGNESS.The difference is that the abstract concept of the object in“take X”is the majority,while X in“na X”is mainly concrete entity.The similarity between“zhua X”and“catch X”constructions lies in that X category includes specific nouns or noun phrases,abstract nouns or noun phrases,which means these constructions emphasize the THINGNESS.The difference is that the syntax category of X in“zhua X”includes verbs and adjectives,and the abstract entity of X in“zhua X”constructions accounts for the majority.While the concrete entity of X in“Catch X”constructions is more than that in“zhua X”.Semantically,“na”and“take”roughly go through similar semantic chains.The difference is that the verb“na”can be grammatically transformed into a preposition,while“take”doesn’t have this usage.The semantic chains of“zhua”and“catch”are roughly the same.The difference is that the prototypical meaning of“zhua”accounts for the highest proportion,while the prototypical meaning of“catch”accounts for a small proportion.This shows that the Chinese“V_catchX”construction is closer to the prototypical meaning,and the certain semantic meanings are highly productive and grammaticalized.The English“V_catchX”construction can be connected to many semantic types.This indicates that“take”and“catch”can be extended into richer meanings,while“na”and“zhua”have clear functions,resulting in less possibility and extensibility of semantic expansion compared to English.Pragmatically,the common pragmatic features of na X and take X constructions are economy,prominence and novelty.The difference is that“take X”construction shows the speaker’s sense of command.“Zhua X”and“catch X”have the same pragmatic features,namely economy,prominence and novelty.But“zhua X”also reflects the characteristics of conventionalization.This feature is not reflected in“catch X”construction.There are similarities and differences between English and Chinese“V_catchX”constructions.The similarities lie in the similar physiological basis and basic cognitive ability.Differences come from different physical environment and social cultural environment.