A Study On Double Object Construction In Mandarin Chinese

The literature on double object constructions, henceforce DOCs, has featured much in theories of syntax and semantics. Issues often addressed include: (i) the number of NP arguments involved (monadic, dyadic and triadic predicates), (ii) the relationship between DOC and DC, and (iii) the range of Chinese DOC or what kind of construction can enter into the scope of DOC in Chinese.This thesis has tentatively presented a new perspective to study the Chinese DOC with Construction Grammar (CG) under the framework of Cognitive approach. The author negates the traditional assumption that there is a derivational relationship between DOC and DC and offers evidences from Chinese DOC to explain that both DOC and DC are base generated. Despite the syntactic form of DOC, NP V NP1 NP2, the author tries to make clear the semantic properties of Chinese DOC. The author argues that Chinese DOC can be viewed as an independent grammatical entity which has the meaning of CAUSE-TRANSFER (RECEIVE/LOSE) that is independent of particular verbs. The sense that the agent argument acts to cause successful transfer of an object to a recipient can be regarded as the prototype of Chinese DOC and all the Chinese double object structures constitute a radical linguistic category. All the other Chinese DOCs, both core and marginal, can be viewed as extentions from the prototype and the extentions are licensed by metaphor or metonymy.This thesis also explains why the commonly acknowledged two-place predicate can take three arguments when they occur in the DOC. As for the relationship of DOC and DC, the thesis goes to the conclusion that there is no transformation between DOC and Datvie Construction (DC) through carefully analysis.And this thesis makes a try to the application of Conceprual Metaphor theory in the linguistc study at the interface of syntax and semantics. Analyzing the materials of linguistic objects with the help of some semantic and cognitive tools will make the syntactic observation and formalization of the linguistic objects much easier and clearer.