A Comparative Study Of English And Chinese Ditransitive Constructions

As one of the most frequently used sentence patterns in both English and Chinese, ditransitive construction has drawn intellectual pursuit from different schools of linguists. Many issues of ditransitive construction have been explicitly studied by the linguists from the perspectives of traditional structuralism and transformational grammar, but no one consensus has been reached. At the same time, even though ditransitive construction in both languages has been systematically explored, little has been done towards either the view of language universality or the view of language specificity. Based on the framework of construction grammar and some related cognitive concepts, this thesis aims to make a comparative study of the English and Chinese Ditransitive constructions, focusing on delimitation, the prototypical sense and integration of construction and verbs. By doing so, we attempt to provide cross-linguistic evidence for the universal experiential foundation of human languages and language-specific presentation of those basic human experiences, in a hope of reinforcing the understanding of the concept of form/meaning pair in cognitive linguistics.The thesis first sets out to compare what can be put into ditransitive construction. Based on the criteria set by Goldberg on ditransitive construction, we have found: (1) both calling and obtaining category can be put into ditransitive constructions in English and Chinese. (2) Some VNN patterns in Chinese without meaning of transfer don't belong to ditransitive construction. Then we compare prototypical sense that ditransitive construction bears in English and Chinese. We have found enough evidence to show that the prototypical sense of ditransitive construction in English is a transfer from a volitional agent to a willing recipient. However, Chinese ditransitive construction is somewhat polysemous, with CAUSE-TRANSFER as the superordinate constructional meaning and "obtaining" and "giving" the hyponymic constructional meaning. The two subcategories are considered as the central senses of the Chinese ditransitive construction. Then we make a comparison of the integration of verbs and constructions in the two languages. The major findings are as follows: (1) Verbs signifying giving integrate with construction very well in both Chinese and English ditransitive constructions, with little change in the constructional meaning. (2) Verbs of creation can only integrate with ditransitive construction in English. However, ditransitive construction in English imposes constructional meaning of CAUSE-TRANSFER on the creation on predicates, while ditransitive construction in Chinese can not coerce verbs of creation. (3) Verbs of obtaining can enter both languages. However, ditransitive construction in English imposes CAUSE-RECEIVE on the obtaining predicates; while verbs of obtaining apply ditransitive construction in Chinese a meaning of receiving. (4) Bi-directional verbs, such as jie (borrow, lend), exist only in Chinese, indicating a transaction without designating the specific direction. However, the direction can be deduced on the bases of specific context in which the bi-directional verb is used. So we can conclude the similarities of ditransitive construction in the two languages are: (1) Ditransitive constructions in English and Chinese have the syntactic presentation of NP+V+NP1+NP2. The prototypes of the three arguments of the two constructions have the same semantic property, and can be extended through metaphor. (2)Typical ditransitive verbs can enter both constructions, bringing no difference to the meaning of the two constructions. However, there exist some differences: (1) the delimitation of ditransitive constructions in the two languages is different. (2) Compared with English ditransitive construction which takes CAUSE-RECEIVE as the central sense, the Chinese ditransitive construction is more inclusive in that it also includes the obtaining category. (3) The types of verbs that can enter the Chinese ditransitive constructions are also quite different, which shows English ditransitive construction has a higher degree of coerce force than that of Chinese ditransitive construction.To know the similarities and distinctions between the ditransitive construction in both English and Chinese is only a part of our effort, a linguistic study requires more efforts for the goal of adequate explanation. Therefore, the thesis also tries to explore the possible reason for those similarities and distinctions. On the one hand, language universal plays a major part in accounting for the similarities, because the ditransitive construction in both languages is based on the similar human experience and event type. On the other hand, grammaticalization degree varies in different languages, resulting in various presentations of the same human experience and event type in different languages.