A Corpus-based Study Of The "from X To Y" Pattern

In this paper, the author made comprehensive research on the "From X to Y" Pattern ,from the perspectives of formal features, semantic types, grammatical function and development and evolvement. It contains six parts:Part one introduced the significance,the background and the technique of the research.Part two studied the grammatical function of the "From X to Y" Pattern, pointed out that it can be used as subject, predicate, object, adverbial and attribute.Part three analyzed formal features of the "From X to Y" pattern. Firstly, analyzed the syllable structure of this pattern, investigated the conditions of syllable and symmetry, described that whether it is monosyllable or multisyllable, symmetric or not, there is no differences on its character function. Secondly, analyzed the structural form of this pattern, and found that most of the time, X and Y are symmetric.Part four studied the semantic types of the "From X to Y" Pattern. Firstly, analyzed the meaning and symmetric, described that X and Y can not allocate arbitrarily. Secondly, described that X can not be exchanged with Y in the combined structure of the "From X to Y" Pattern, and they always express the static property, however, the situation of the attributive structure is opposite.Part five analyzed some variant styles of this pattern and the emphasizing effect of the successive application for semantic expression.Part six analyzed the development of the "From X to Y" Pattern. Firstly, found out that monosyllable X and Y appeared in Eastern Han dynasty, multisyllable and asymmetric X and Y appeared in the last year of han dynasty. Secondly, analyzed the development of the meaning of this pattern, discovered that the meaning of the "From X to Y" pattern experienced five steps which are dynamic field, social space, material space, time space and logic space.