A Study Of The Double-NCP Construction In Modern Chinese

This thesis takes a constructionist approach to a peculiar group of sentences in modern Chinese. The sentences are believed to be joined with a construction named double-NCP (numeral-classifier phrase) construction. Efforts are made to explore the construction systematically and thoroughly so as to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the sentences. Also attempts are made to explain the controversial issues relevant to the sentences based on the findings about the construction.The study shows that the double-NCP construction is a form and meaning correspondence with the form of (NCP+NP)₁+V+(NCP+NP)₂ and the meaning of containment. Owing to the +CONTAINER+ metaphor that works to trigger the constructional meaning, only those NCP-NP chunks whose referents bear the similarity of being bounded with a container can fit the construction, and once they are allowed into the construction, the construction will map onto them the containing ability and the containment relation with the other chunk as well.Under the influence of the constructional meaning, the construction exerts great power on the component parts and lays many semantic restrictions on both the NPs and the verb. The NPs appearing in the construction are mostly those of basic level categories. The construction denies them the access of modifiers that highlight attributes irrelevant to the containment relation but permits those helpful in the emphasis of the relation. It confines the verb to those denoting the basic sense relation between the referents of the two NPs and deprives the verb of its dynamics. Besides, the construction prevents the verb from being modified by adverbs specifying the details of the action denoted by the verb but allows it to be modified by words helpful in indicating the capacity of the first NCP-NP chunk.What's more, the construction accounts a lot for the controversial issues, including the reversibility issue and so the so-called agent-object issue. In addition to the relative insensitivity of the Chinese verb system to the vector direction, the reversibility issue can also be traced back to the metaphor mechanism of the construction as well as the verb's being static in the construction. As to the so-called agent-object issue, it is the construction that strikes a balance between the second NP's nature of being a best choice for the subject and its being the object in the sentence.