| Caused motion refers to an event in which an agent causes an object to move. Caused motion is a pervasive human experience and constitutes our basic understanding of the world. As the overlapping field of motion events and causative events, caused motion expressions are possessed with unique semantic features and syntactic patterns. Previous studies are generally carried out in the framework of motion events and little attention has been heeded to caused motion, which is always considered as a subsidiary of voluntary motion. Caused motion expressions in general, especially those in Chinese are in need of an in-depth research. There remains a room of improvement and the topic is worth further studying.Following the three dimensional model of "Reality-Cognition-Language" proposed by cognitive linguistics, our study takes an inside-out approach through semantic analysis to syntactic analysis. Our language data come from a self-built novel corpus which contains15novels with3million words, several online corpuses, dictionaries and Internet resources. Based on cognitive construction grammar, our study also incorporates other relevant cognitive theories as our theoretical framework. Starting from a cognitive analysis, our study probes into semantic elements and framework of caused motion expressions, as well as CM1constructions in English and Chinese. Our research aims at sorting out structures of CM expressions and establishing CM constructions network systems in English and Chinese.Our research aims at an overall study of CM expressions in English and Chinese combining both macro and micro perspectives.Firstly, our study summarizes the features of five semantic elements of caused motion in English and Chinese from a micro perspective. The results show that there are both six types of causers, five types of causees and five types of driving force in Chinese and English CM expressions. And caused motion is not only limited to motion in physical space and can be extended to abstract space, such as psychological and social space.The path element of CM expressions in English and Chinese can be both expressed through three vectors, four directions and four dimensions.Secondly, based on a corpus investigation, our study classifies CM constructions into different groups and illustrates how the CM concepts are projected onto the language surface. Compared with words, sentences are a higher level of the paring of form and meaning. The research circle have not reached consensus on the relationship between constructions expressing the same concept. Are they the variants of the same construction, the derivative forms of the original construction or just parallel constructions? Our study focuses on the constructions deriving from different schemas of the same semantic concept. Based on our corpus investigation, there are mainly5CM constructions in English and8CM constructions in Chinese. These constructions are the crystallization of different schemas of the same concept and they all belong to the same construction family.Thirdly, our study aims at sorting out CM network systems in English and Chinese and have a contrastive study of the two. We have tried to classify and regroup CM constructions on different levels. The results show that CM construction is a hierarchical complicated network system, ranging from top abstract constructions to bottom concrete constructions. The top abstract constructions activate the bottom hereditary constructions which then evolve into concrete expressions through metaphorical extensions. Based on a contrastive study between CM constructions in English and Chinese, we draw a conclusion that English CM constructions are mainly professional constructions which are clearly organized and Chinese CM constructions are mainly flexible amateur constructions which belong to different groups and are intertwined with each other.Fourthly, our study differentiates the verb’s basic construction (VBC) and super-verbal construction (SVC) and has a comprehensive analysis of CM expressions with both the verb meaning and construction meaning taken into consideration. Our study illustrates the integration between verbs and CM constructions in a great detail. Typical and untypical caused motion verbs interact with and integrate into caused motion SVC at different levels. Based on a study of common and unusual caused motion sentences, we find that there is a basic language law called construction intensity hidden in all the CM construction sentences, especially in the exceptional expressions.Finally, our study investigates into CM expressions in six languages from the perspectives of eastern and western languages. English shares a lot in common with German in their preference of concise "NP1+VP1+NP2+PP"construction. French resembles Chinese in accompanied motion and indirect caused motion expressions. Japanese has a high level of language diversity and iconicity. The three eastern languages—Chinese, Japanese and Korean all have diversified constructions for different CM events which shows a striking difference with three western languages. Our contrastive study provides a new insight into language contrastive studies from a construction grammar approach and deepens the study of language typology.Compared with other similar researches, some original achievements of this study are as follows:Firstly, our study has refined the semantic structure of CM events under the broad framework of motion events. Based on the most typical CM scenes, we have classified eight caused motion frame types which in turn include34frame schemas. This classification helps to clarify and strengthen the semantic framework of motion events. Our study has also established a caused motion verb inventory which includes583English caused motion verbs and259Chinese caused motion verbs. This inventory is a breakthrough of the previous studies of motion verbs.Secondly, our study enriches and deepens the previous studies of language typology. Talmy (1985,2000) and Slobin (2003,2004) have classified the world languages into dichotomy and trichotomy based on lexicalization patterns of motion expressions. Our study tries to check the credibility of these divisions from the study of CM expressions. Our study finds that Chinese CM expressions have diversified lexicalization patterns which focus on [Motion verbs/Path verbs+Directional verbs] and [Motion verbs/Path verbs+Complicated Path verbs].While English CM expressions centers on [Motion verbs/Path verbs+PP/Adv].Based on these findings, caused motion in Chinese is expressed through a compound union of main verbs and path verbs, the pattern of which is similar to a satellite-framed language. And English CM expressions are even more typical of a satellite-framed language. This results is a proof of Talmy’s dichotomy and provides many details to support the latter.Thirdly, languages are the vehicle of thoughts and thoughts are the underlying mechanism of languages. After a comparison of CM expressions, this study reveals language principles and thinking modes of language users. English CM constructions have clear division of functions and focus on a professional construction. Chinese CM constructions have a high flexibility and are mainly amateur constructions. We thus generalize language principles in English and Chinese as: precise vs. flexible, analytical vs. comprehensive, centralized vs. dispersive, dynamic vs. static.Finally, this study can also provide some theoretical and practical guidance for translation, foreign language teaching and corpus improvement. The constructions for direct, indirect, accompanied and sequential caused motion can serve as translation standards in translation practice. Implicit and explicit teaching can be combined in the foreign language teaching, the former being useful when the target language construction is similar to that of mother tongue and the latter being useful when the two are different. The most typical CM sentence patterns in English and Chinese can provide a shortcut for the searching of relevant expressions in the corpus.To conclude, the present study probes into the study of semantic elements and CM construction features as well as integration mechanism on a micro level. Meanwhile, we sort out the semantic framework and CM construction network systems in English and Chinese, and have a contrastive study of relevant expressions in six languages on a macro level. The findings of this study help to enrich and develop cognitive construction grammar. |
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