| Assimilating and drawing upon theories from the reasonable parts of modern linguistics and psychology, this dissertation gives a detailed description of the three features of the construction V+O~P and hence makes a further semantic interpretation of it. The V in the construction involves mono-transitive verbs in Chinese, such as吃in吃食堂and洗in洗冷水, as well as unergative verbs, like睡in睡地板and飞in飞上海. The unergative verb is one type of the intransitive verb whose single argument in normal circumstances is considered to be the initiator of some action, i.e. the agent. OΡhere stands for"pseudo-object", a term created by朱德熙, which means that a certain nominal phrase occupies the syntactic position immediately following the verb but then this nominal phrase does not assume the semantic role of patient (as opposed to agent) and therefore is not the authentic internal argument of the verb.There are altogether three characteristics of the construction V+O~P semantically or structurally. Firstly, when V is a mono-transitive verb, the real object replaced with O~P can be mentally recovered. Taking the phrase吃食堂as an example, we know clearly that食堂is not the real patient of the verb吃. Instead, it is often considered as the place where the eating action takes place. Although the true patient does not appear in this phrase, we can still conclude that the true one should be饭or some other kind of food. That's why we say the authentic patient argument is not lost and has the feature of mental recoverability. In connection with this, what is the ground for the recoverability of the original internal argument? Secondly, there exists semantic multiplicity in the construction V+O~P. Apparently洗冷水and睡地板are richer than their counterparts用冷水洗and在地板上睡in connotation, and we can also sense that the former diction is more vivid and expressive. However, what is the additional meaning and how does it come into being? Thirdly, the V and O~P cannot be detached structurally, which is tantamount to saying that other constituents are not expected to insert between them, otherwise the intended meaning cannot be preserved or even the newly formed sentence would become unacceptable. For example, if他洗冷水and他吃丈母娘are couched in the emphatic form respectively as他洗的是冷水and他吃的是丈母娘, the acceptability will become a problem, let alone the intended subtle adversary relationship originally implied in the construction.With regard to the first issue--the recoverability of the replaced object in people's mind, we mainly explain it from the perspectives of metonymy and abduction. Traditional view treats metonymy merely as a figure of speech. But cognitive linguistics considers it as a way of cognition. By the application of theories on metonymy and abduction, we could plausibly account for why the replaced object is reproducible in our mind and why"吃食堂"can be understood properly in our conversation.As for the second issue--semantic multiplicity of the construction V+O~P, we mainly account for it from the following three points. (1) Prototype theory and adversative relationship. Prototypical relationship between agents and patients involves adversary semantic meaning, i.e. patients usually fling down the gauntlet to agents in ability. If we substitute吃食堂for在食堂吃饭, we are rendering or converting a locative constituent into a patient-like element by linguistic (mainly syntactic) means and then a sense of subjective adversary relationship, i.e. a challenge meaning, will emerge between the canteen (mainly indicating the food in canteen) and the agent (i.e. people who eat the food made by the canteen staff). We are normally under the impression that food cooked in a canteen is usually less delicious than that made at home. Besides, the sanitation condition there is far from being good, but lacking any alternative, people sometimes have to choose to eat in a canteen, feeling challenged. (2) Construal theory and information structure. Due to various cognition levels and observation perspectives, there might be different mental representations of the same situation. These various abstract mental representations when combined with and materialized into language form would resort to different syntactic structures so as to reflect this mental differentiation. When a constituent originally posited in the secondary information focus is promoted to the primary one, definitely a particular aspect of meaning would become emphasized and more salient. Naturally semantic multiplicity of the V+O~P construction is generated. (3) Constructionist view of language. Constructions per se have meaning. When a verb's meaning integrates with a construction meaning, its former argument structure will probably be changed. Meanwhile, the thematic roles assumed by the arguments concerned are also likely to vary. In the construction under discussion, O~P not only points to such non-core or peripheral semantic roles as LOCATION or INSTRUMENT, it also functions as a PATIENT-like object, thus giving rise to multi-meanings, what we call the semantic multiplicity of V+O~P.In order to solve the third issue--why V and O~P are interdependent structurally, we chiefly consider it from viewpoints of grammaticalization and co-composition. Repetition is the primary cause for grammaticalization, and the result therefrom is the entrenched relative syntactic settlement of the construction in question with some particular meaning, so no constituents are allowed to break in on these two parts to impact the fixed form and meaning. In terms of the co-composition view, the acquirement of the enriched meaning of V+O~P comes from the V and O~P under adjacency, which means that two elements are realized in surface structure as neighboring elements. So if any constituent(s) should be inserted in between them, the adjacency condition would be violated and the intended meaning would get lost. |
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