| Metonymy is a heatedly discussed topic in cognitive linguistics.With the development of cognitive linguistics,people have got a brand new idea about metonymy. Traditionally,metonymy is just thought to be a figure of speech.Now metonymy is thought as a conceptual phenomenon,which can help organize our language,thoughts and actions.Verb-resultative constructions in Mandarin Chinese have drawn great attention of many linguists and researchers.Many of them study V-R compounds by analyzing the valence of V and that of R to get the valence of V-R.Some approach to VRCs with event structure analysis.When it comes to causer selection in Chinese VRCs,we prefer to draw some idea from event structure analysis of VRCs,that is,conceptually,there are two sub-events,one is causing event and the other one is caused event,underlying the causative event conveyed by the VRCs.With Chinese VRCs as the research subject,the present paper tries to give a metonymic explanation of causer selection in Chinese VRCs, the constraints on the realization of metonymic mechanism,in particular.According to the cognitive view of metonymy,metonymy operates within an idealized cognitive model(ICM for short).In an event ICM,some constituents may be used metonymically to stand for the event as a whole.We regard this as a specific instantiation of part-whole metonymy.We hold that in Chinese VRCs,sometimes the causing event may be expressed very completely in surface construction,showing its nature of eventivity.But more of than not,some constituents of the causing event,mostly in nominal form,may be selected to stand for the causing event as a whole.The mechanism behind this phenomenon,we hold,is metonymy.It is the metonymic mechanism which helps shaping the surface structure of verb-resultative sentences in Mandarin Chinese.Our focus of this paper,however,is not just to give a metonymic explanation of causer selection in Chinese VRCs.We'd like to analyze the semantic foundation of the metonymy in causer selection in Chinese VRCs,the cognitive principles which motivate the utility of metonymy in causer selection,and the semantic constraints on the realization of metonymy in causer selection,in particular.We elaborate our opinion on the semantic constraints on the realization of metonymy in causer selection in Chinese VRCs from two perspectives:one is the internal semantic constraint in verb-resultative sentences,and the other is the causativity of semantic constituents in the causing event.Analyzing causer selection of Chinese VRCs from the perspective of metonymy has some advantages:firstly,we can get a more convincing explanation on the multiplicity of the causers in Chinese VRCs,especially on the phenomenon that some nominal constituents can take the place of causer in Chinese VRCs without causing confusion on the exact causer of the causative event conveyed by VRCs.The thesis also pays great effort on the constraints on realization of metonymy in causer selection in Chinese VRCs.Syntactically,we can find generally the types of Chinese VRCs.And only when we figure out the semantic foundation and the cognitive motivations of the syntactic structure can we illustrate the conditions on which some constituents of the causing event can be raised to the level of causer in Chinese VRCs while others may not.The present study had theoretical value and practical significance.By qualitative analysis and based on tremendous actual linguistic expressions,the present paper gives us a systematic explanation of the multiplicity of causers in Chinese VRCs;and what's more,the study could provide help for Chinese language teaching to foreigners. |
