The Generation And Expansion Of The Causation Concept And The Causative Sentence In English

Causation is a basic concept in human experience. It refers to such a situation in which one entity imposes force on another entity, which experiences a physical change in location or state thereafter. The concept is the result of humans' conceptualization of the causative events in the physical world.Within the framework of the prototype category theory, the present paper has made a study of the generation and expansion of the causation concept and the causative sentence in English. Specific research problems include the experiential basis of the generation, the process and the mechanisms of the expansion, and the semantic and syntactic features of the prototypes and non-prototypes.The study shows that the prototype of the causation concept refers to the concept in which a human causer intentionally exerts direct physical force on the causee, which absorbs the force and undergoes an instant and obvious physical change. The focus of the concept is the direct transmission of the physical causative force. The prototype of the concept is the cognitive result of the conceptualization of the physical causative events that are most perceptible and thus most typical in the objective world. With the development of their cognitive abilities, human beings proceed to conceptualize the non-prototypical causative events which involve indirect causative relation or causative relation of the abstract kind in the social and mental world. The metaphorical nature of the human mind enables people to cognize those complex and abstract causative events, and, as a result, the non-prototypes of the causation concept are formed from the conceptualization of those events by means of metaphor and metonymy. The most salient feature of the non-prototypes of the causation concept is that there is no transmission of direct physical causative force.The study also shows that through the process of representation, the causation concept is mapped into language and generates the causative sentence. The prototypes of the concept are represented by prototypical causative sentences, while the non-prototypes of the concept are represented by non-prototypical causative sentences. The nucleus of the causative sentence is the causative verb. A causative verb can be decomposed into the following semantic elements: the direct transmission of physical force+ the intentionality of the transmission+ the manner of the force+ the result of the force, among which 'the direct transmission of physical force' is the necessary and indispensable feature. In view of the different combinations of the compositional elements, prototypical causative verbs fall into four types and constitute the prototypical causative sentences. In terms of the linguistic representation of the causative result, the prototypical causative sentences in English fall into result-implied ones and result-expressed ones, the former being reflected by NP1+Vcause+NP2, in which the result is integrated with the causative force; and the latter being reflected by NP1+Vcause+NP2+AP/PP/VP, in which the result is expressed by an AP/PP/VP. In terms of the physical features of the change in the causee, the prototypical causative sentences fall into caused-motion causative sentences reflected by NP1+Vcause+NP2+(PP), and caused-result sentences reflected by NP1+Vcause+NP2+(AP/VP). Semantically, non-prototypical causative verbs mainly comprise the following types: the indirect transmission of physical force; the emission of physical force + the manner of the force; causative relation + the result of the force; the transmission of the speech force, the psychological force, the metaphorical physical force and the subjective force. Non-prototypical causative verbs acting as the predicates are the basis of the non-prototypical causative sentences.The paper holds that in the expansion of the causation concept, such subjective devices as windowing of attention, ways of scanning and perspectives also play an important role, and that, in the expansion of the causative sentence, they impose constraints on the foregrounding and backgrounding of the semantic elements in the syntactic construction.