A Cognitive Study Of English Ergative Construction

This paper attempts to explore the English ergative construction with the theoretical framework of cognitive linguistics, aiming at seeking the motivations underlying syntactic constructions. With regard to the study of ergative construction, it is Perlmutter who put forth the Unaccusativity Hypothesis in 1978. Since then , a great deal of research has been done on ergative constructions from the point of view of Transformational-Generative linguistics and Systemic-Functional linguistics. For a long time, the English ergative is discussed as an automatic phenomenon of itself, while its construction is seldom touched upon from cognition. In this paper, it is suggested that the English ergative construction, like other English syntactic constructions, is the linguistic realization of human's cognition and perception of the world. The language structure is in nature the projection of the laws of reality. From this stand, the study of the English ergative construction is considered not only as the process of seeking the grammars of language, but also as the process of exploring the laws of human beings civilization. Cognition acts as the medium between language and reality. Then, how do cognitive models motivate the construction and understanding, of the English ergative expressions? This is the question we will tackle in this paper.This paper consists of seven parts:The first part offers a general introduction to existence of ergativity in languages and the observation of ergative expressions, explaining the purpose and the scope of the study.The second part, based on a birds-eye review of the observation of the English ergative as morphological or as syntactic form in literature, insists that the patient-subject English ergative is a typical English ergative construction, which is a form-function pair from the perspective of cognitive linguistics.The third part gives a brief introduction to Construction Grammar, theories of Iconicity and Grammaticalization.The fourth part, within the frame of cognitive linguistics, proposes that the syntactic construction is the integration of the grammatical relations and the semantic roles. By analyzing the attributes of the English ergative construction, the thesis concludes that integration of grammatical relations with the semantic roles is motivated by cognitive patterns related.The fifth part is centered on the semantic analysis of the ergative verbs in English. In terms of semantics, the English ergative verbs are categorized as manner-ergative verbs, process-ergative verbs, creation-ergative verbs and action-ergative verbs. Further, it is found that the four categories are characteristic of "cline" in a semantic continuum.The sixth part offers an exploration of motivation and mechanism of the English ergative construction. It is postulated that there is a corresponding relationship between syntactic structure and semantic structure of the English ergative construction, and that the syntactic formation of the English ergative construction is the grammaticalization of related semantic and pragmatic factors.The last part is a summary of the thesis as a whole. It also points out that there are still some pending problems, such as different views on the issue of what an ergative verb is, which are open to further researches.