A Cognitive Study Of Verbal V+NP Constructions In English And Chinese

Verbs, with the special functions in semantics and syntactic structures of sentences and particularly their limitations and attachment to noun elements(or noun phrases), have always been the hot topic in the studies of modern grammar. In terms of linguistic studies, grammatical studies on language encoding of events and their participants, including grammatical relations, thematic roles, argument structure constructions and argument realizations, etc., involve the complex relations between verbs and nouns or noun phrases, undergoing an evolving progress from the description of grammatical construction to the exploration of semantic function. Be they the descriptions of their syntagmatic relations from the structural approach, the explanation of their semantic roles and relations from the functional approach, and the exploration of the interactions between their syntactic and semantic structures, the previous studies have analyzed in great detail such issues as grammatical structures, syntactic attributes, semantic construction etc. of V + NP constructions, leading to many fruitful discoveries. The universal definition of their lexical status, and in particular the issue of argument realization in constructing verbal V + NP constructions, however, are only adequately described, but inadequately explained in English or in Chinese. The analytic mode of conceptual semantics fails to offer a satisfactory solution due to the neglect of the encyclopedic basis, achieving no obvious breakthroughs. While studies in Chinese are just under way, those in English are particularly weak, leaving a large space for further exploration.According to the basic standard of lexical unit(Zhou 2003, 2004), this dissertation mainly observes the commonly-existing verbal constructions that are composed of verbal and NP morphemes and those whose parts of speech are primarily verbs, varying from compounds with the typical lexical status to phrases or fixed collocations with the prominent syntactic structures, and uniformly defines them as VIII verbal V + NP constructions, marked as [V + NP]υ. Within the framework of cognitive construction grammar, verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese, as the form-meaning pairings, have all the attributes of symbolic units, forming one of the basic constructions in language. Accordingly analyzing their grammatical characteristics, internal syntactic relations and semantic attributes as well as the differences in English and Chinese, the study adopts the force dynamic causal theory of argument realization(Croft 2012) to discuss the cognitive semantic determinants for the formation of such lexical units, precisely summarizing their argument-licensing mechanisms while explicating the similar and different features in English and Chinese. The main research questions are as follows:(1) What morphological types and characteristics do verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese display?(2) What may be the essential attributes of semantic structures of verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese?(3) What are the argument-licensing structures and mechanisms that determine the formation of verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese?Within the theoretical framework of cognitive linguistics, especially within construction grammar, the dissertation, comprehensively adopting the perceptual symbol system theory in cognitive psychology that focuses on the encoding of linguistic signs, the prototype theory and the force dynamic causal theory, carries out a relatively systematic cognitive study of morphological, syntactic and semantic as well as argument-licensing issues of verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese. The perceptual symbol system theory and the prototype theory are mainly applied to cognitively expound the semantic construction basis and characteristics for the representation of such lexical units. The force dynamic causal theory is a model of temporal, qualitative and causal structure of events, constructing a comprehensive analytic mode about the force dynamics and aspect of verbal semantic representation. With the geometric-cum-graph structure representation of cognitive linguistics, the force dynamic causal theory vividly depicts the causal and aspectual structures as the core of verbal semantic structures as well their critical roles in accounting for IX argument realizations. In terms of semantic essence, the ranking of core participant roles in argument realizations, including Subject, Object and various Obliques, is determined by the force dynamic causal structure of events and meantime affected by the verbal predicate’s aspectual profile. Aspect represents the qualitative states and unfolding manners as events unfold over time, which is defined by both time dimension(x axis) and qualitative state dimension(y axis) as a two-dimensional geometric representation. It displays the evolving trends and types of qualitative states over time. While representing the temporal phases of events, aspect also involves the unfolding manners, i.e., changing qualitative states of events over time. A temporally ordered sequence of phases in events constitutes the aspectual contour while the profiled phase is represented or denoted by a predicator in the specific tense-aspect construction. The aspectual model of two-dimensional geometric representation is essentially a frame-semantic representation, displaying the different profiles of certain concept in the whole aspectual contour. Causal structure, as the third dimension, defines a causal chain of force dynamic transmission as one participant’s subevent acting upon the other participant’s subevent, which is not a geometric dimension, but a directed, acyclic and nonbranching graph structure. The causal chain of force transmission links, not or not only those subevents, but mainly the different participant roles and determines their ordering sequence. In the three-dimensional model of causal and aspectual structure, the temporal, qualitative state and fore dynamic structure reflect the different types of cognitive construals on events, which are encoded in certain verbs and their tense-aspect constructions. Croft(2012) holds that affectedness featuring causal and aspectual structure plays a role in accounting for the uniformity in realization of noun or noun phrase as Object argument, and summarizes the hierarchy of event types for affectedness as effected action(result attained), effected action(result unattained), contact and pursuit, along with the transitive event prototype. These types of affectedness are of great explanatory power and wide applicability, providing the theoretical foundation for analyzing argument realizations of forming verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese.The major research methods adopted in the dissertation include quantitative statistics, qualitative interpretations, comparative analyses. The New Oxford English-Chinese Dictionary(1st edition in 2007) and Xiandai Hanyu Cidian(6th edition in 2012) are regarded as the main sources of data collection, from which 1476 units in English and 5858 ones in Chinese of verbal V + NP constructions are exhaustively collected. According to the morphological types, internal syntactic structure and semantic quality, the dissertation carries out systematic quantitative statistics and relevant qualitative analyses. The study shows:(1)There exist obvious differences in the morphological types of verbal V+NP constructions in English and Chinese.Verbal V+NP constructions in English particularly feature the changes in the morphological markers of the nouns’grammatical attributes,whose specific forms vary from[V+N]υ(21.16%),[V+ART+N]υ(33.47%),[V+PRON+N]υ(24.72%)to[V+N+PREP]υ(20.89%).Those in Chinese differ in the number of syllables or Chinese characters,which can be represented as[Vsingle+Nsingle]υ(92.11%),[Vsingle+Ndouble]υ(7.44%)and[Vsingle+Nmultiple]υ(0.44%),showing the obvious trend of double syllables.The morphological distinction between verbal V+NP constructions in English and Chinese indicates that,in terms of the construal of the attributes of verbs and nouns or noun phrases,English is constitutive while Chinese is realizational(沈家煊2007,2009).According to the prototype theory in cognitive linguistics,[V+NP]υis the abstract schema for verbal V+NP constructions in English and Chinese,from which derive the various prototypes,such as[V+ART+N]υ,[V+PRON+N]υ,[Vsingle+Nsingle]υand so on.The further elaboration of prototypes will be extended as the rich and various instances of verbal V+NP constructions.From the schema to prototype and instance exhibit the features of prototypical categorization.(2) The internal syntactic relation shows the same argument structure in verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese. While verbal V + NP constructions can be distinguished into “verb object”, “verb adverbial”, “verb complement” and “subject predicate” in terms of their internal syntactic relations, the essence of syntactic relations is in fact the argument structure or predication structure. The key to analyzing argument structure of verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese involves the selection and realization of nominal arguments. Argument structure precisely defines the internal syntactic relation of verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese, displaying the uniformity in the lexical and syntactic structure while disclosing the common features in terms of the internal forms of such lexical units in English and Chinese.(3) The semantic attributes of verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese highlight the determinants of verbal semantic structures for their formations. The internal semantic relations in verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese, with the relations between the thematic roles and predicates mainly consisting of internal(core) arguments, which also reflect the varying degrees of transitivity within such lexical units. The hierarchy of affectedness of subsequent nominal arguments, which features the force-dynamic causal and aspectual structures, varies a great deal in verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese, indicating the low degree of transitivity in such lexical units. Therefore, the nominal objects with the various kinds of semantic types are permitted and realized as the arguments in such constructions. The statistics about the number of semantic items shows the weak tendency of polysemy in verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese, with the average number of semantic items being 1.03 in English and 1.17 in Chinese. The semantic items display the multiple types of complex compositionality among the constitutive morphemes, which indicates that the semantic structures are the fundamental determinants for their formations.The systematic discussion on morphological, syntactic and semantic features of verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese and the comparative analyses between Chinese and English provide a trustworthy foundation for further explication of cognitive semantic determinants for the formation of such lexical units. Verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese, as the major means of linguistic symbolic encoding for event structures, derive from the cognitive processing of external objective events or usage events, well explaining the existence of the predicate structure at the level of lexical concept between lexicon and syntax in the process of their formations while verifying their essential attributes as the verb’s argument structure constructions. In cognitive construction grammar, the formations of verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese, as the symbolic units of form-meaning pairings, mainly rely on sanction, selection and realization of nouns or noun phrases as Object arguments, which in fact is to explore how the participant roles of the event acquire their cognitive prominences, namely the exploration into the essential features and contents of lexical concepts(Evans 2006, 2009, 2010).The dissertation, adopting the force dynamic causal theory(Croft 2012), summarizes the standard event structures and the relations between the participants that are encoded in verbal V + NP constructions as follows:(1) Participant1(P1, Initiator) applies the force on Participant2(P2, Endpoint), making the latter undergo the certain kind of directed change, or(2) Participant1(P1) applies the force on Participant3(P3) by virtue of Participant2(P2). Generally, the force-dynamic causal relation only exists between P1 and P2 while P2 and P3 exhibit not the causal relation, but the spatial dependence, contact and so on.The force dynamic relation between the participants of the event exists as the core of verbal semantic structure, whose force transmission can be represented as follows: P1 → 【P2】or P1 → 【P2】- P3.Obviously the force dynamic causal relation displays a unique attribute of argument structure in such lexical units, which functions as the fundamental semantic determinant for the selections and realizations of various arguments. For the formations of verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese, the selections and realizations of nominal Object arguments occur when the sub-event participants as the Endpoint undergoe the directed change of state upon the force-dynamic causation from the sub-event participants as the Initiator, which displays the double impact of the causal and aspectual structures. Thus the Endpoint participants, whose aspectual types rank highest in the verbal aspectual hierarchy and are the aspectual features of the overall events, form the uniform lexical concepts as the verbal predicates in the force dynamic causal chain, licensing their realizations as nominal Object arguments in the formations of verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese. The argument-licensing structure can accordingly be indicated as follows: [V + P(Endpoint + Affectedness)]υ. Hence argument realizations in verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese are determined jointly by the force dynamic causal and aspectual structures, and meantime affected by the uniformly matching relation with lexical concepts and profiles of verbs and nouns or noun phrases. These factors work together to license argument realizations.Taking into account the determinants of the causal and aspectual structures, the dissertation, mainly from the perspective of the aspectual structures of nominal Object arguments in the force dynamic causal chain, further specifies the argument-licensing structures and mechanisms in verbal V + NP constructions into four types, and their argument-licensing mechanisms are correspondingly elaborated in details as follows:(1) The punctual achievement of directed change(Type I)The primary target that an Initiator participant applies force onto in the force dynamic transmission, if undergoing the punctual and irreversible directed change of state(on the q dimension), ends up with the Endpoint participant, forming the uniform lexical concept with that of the predicate in the force dynamic causal chain, and can be realized as nominal Object argument, generating verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese. In terms of the hierarchy of the nominal participants for affectedness that involves the causal and aspectual features, the first type of verbal V + NP constructions displays the prototype effect of transitive causal structure. “Bare one’s teeth”, “miehuo” in Chinese Pinyin and so on are typical examples governed by this argument-licensing mechanism.(2) The durative accomplishment of directed change(Type II)The primary target that an Initiator participant applies force onto in the force dynamic transmission, if undergoing the durative directed change of state(on both the t and q dimensions), the result attained and otherwise, ends up with the Endpoint participant, forming the uniform lexical concept with that of the predicate in the force-dynamic causal chain, and can be realized as nominal Object argument, generating verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese. The statistics shows that the number of this type, whose formations are determined by the causal and XIV aspectual structures of durative incremental accomplishment, is abundant, only secondary to Type I. “Make progress”, “juan pugai” in Chinese are all the typical examples.(3) The contact state lacking a directed change(Type III).The primary target that an Initiator participant applies force onto in the force dynamic transmission, if involving the certain kind of point or interval contact, ends up with the Endpoint participant, forming the uniform lexical concept with that of the predicate in the force dynamic causal chain. Although lacking a directed change of state while commonly highlighting the impact of the event on the Initiator participant, such Endpoint participant can also be realized as nominal Object argument, generating verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese.The third type shows the unique characteristics of form-meaning discrepancy, such as “clean house”, “ruxi” in Chinese Pinyin and so on, forming a kind of atypical lexical units with verbal V + NP constructions. The essential reason can be traced back to the various construal operations on event structure and participants’ information in the process of embodied experience of the events, which is just the construal differences in the causal and aspectual structures.(4) The pursuit state lacking a directed change(Type IV)The primary target that an Initiator participant as the volitional subject actively chooses, manipulates and cooperates with(although with no authentic transmission of force relation), if involving the certain kind of point or interval pursuit, ends up with the Endpoint participant, forming the uniform lexical concept with that of the predicate in the force dynamic causal chain. Although lacking a directed change of state while commonly highlighting the impact of the Endpoint participant on the Initiator participant, such Endpoint participant can also be realized as the nominal Object argument, generating verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese. The statistics shows that the fourth type of verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese is very rare in quantity, and the generation is limited as the peripheral member, such as “follow one’s nose”, “kaohuo” in Chinese Pinyin and so on. Type IV is totally different from Type I and Type II whose nominal Object arguments exhibit the obvious feature of Patient, and is not the same as Type III in which nominal Object arguments show no strong transitivity but the feature of Patient, which thus requires the special analyses.The study indicates that verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese, as the symbolic units of form-meaning pairings, are distinct in their morphological types while their internal syntactic relations exhibit the nature of the same argument structure. The verbal semantic structure featuring the aspectual and force dynamic causal structures is the essence and core content of lexical concepts in verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese, determining argument sanction and realizations in the formation of such lexical units. The four types of argument-licensing mechanisms involving verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese attempt to elaborate the morphological features from the perspective of verbal semantic structure, displaying the perceptual symbol basis of linguistic encoding forms while verifying the usage-based cognitive approach that semantics determines syntax and licenses argument realization. In a nutshell, verbal V + NP constructions in English and Chinese, in the process of linguistic encoding or lexicalization of event structures, display the similar tendencies though the morphological structures are sharply distinct in two languages due to the fact that English is realizational while Chinese is constitutive(Shen 2007,2009). As a cognitive semantic account of the existing lexical units in English and Chinese, the study involves not only the ontological issues and a comparison of this type of lexical units in English and Chinese, but also to a larger extent, a cognitive exploration into the relationships between lexical units, thought and the world. Such cognitive thought of language nature is sure to shed some light on language acquisition and natural language processing.