A Constructional Apporach To Incredulity Constructions

It is widely recognized that the basic clause types of a language can form an interrelated network, with their semantic structures paired with particular forms in as general a way as possible. Incredulity construction is a common structure in this semantic network. For instance:a. Him be a doctor!b. My mother ride a motorcycle!c. Your brother help me!In the paradigm of generative approach, sentences above are viewed as semi-regular or peripheral structures. However, the incredulity construction occurs frequently in the process of language application. The meaning of incredulity construction is that the speaker shows incredulity to the proposition in the immediately previous context, and it is partial repetition of the previous proposition. The semantic interpretation of incredulity constructions can't be convincingly attributed to the verbs and other components. In addition, it can't be explained reasonably by the way of deducting its semantics compositionally. Therefore, the construction must be set in the research on grammar. That the incredulity interpretation of the construction is attributed to the construction itself is a more economical solution.In the framework of cognitive linguistics, it is argued that incredulity construction itself can function as a construction in this thesis from the perspective of construction grammar. Furthermore, some evidences are shown to argue that the semantics of the incredulity constructions is not compositionally derived from other constructions existing in the grammar. Besides, it is held that some aspect of the construction is not compositionally stemmed from the lexical items which instantiate it.Evidences suggested in the thesis only provide a necessary condition on the existence of incredulity construction. Several other co-occurring constraints are required in order to triangulate sufficient conditions on incredulity constructions. The following restrictions will be argued to hold of the incredulity expressions.1. The subject of the incredulity construction must appear in accusative form. The subject must be one that can take the responsibility of bearing intonation.2. The verbs in this construction must be non-finite. Tense and modals never appear in the construction.3. Sentential adverbs do not occur in the incredulity constructions. This restriction can attribute to the shortage of tense in the constructions.4. Movement rules such as topicalization, which move constituents into COMP position, are banned in the incredulity construction.In order to lead to a full understanding of the semantics features and functions of incredulity constructions, the constructions in Chinese are explored in the thesis. It is pointed out:1. Since Chinese is a non-inflected language, the case of the subject and the tense of the predicate can not be illustrated in the incredulity constructions.2. Sentential adverbs can not occur in incredulity constructions in English, but sentential adverbs can legally occur in incredulity constructions in Chinese.3. It is recognized that the incredulity constructions in English are characterized by a special intonation pattern in which the subject forms an obligatory intonation center. In contrast, the obligatory intonation center is located in the end of the construction.