A Bidirectional Coercion Approach To English Cognate Object Constructions

As one of the most elusive and sophisticated constructions ever prevailing in English, the COC (Cognate Object Construction) whose verbs, normally intransitive verbs, take their cognate nouns in their object positions, is exemplified by the following examples:(1) Bill sighed a weary sigh.(2) John laughed a hearty laugh.(Jones,1988:89)As can be observed from the examples above, a typically intransitive verb enters the COC, taking as its syntactic object a nominal phrase whose head is morphologically and semantically cognate with the verb. The head of the nominal phrase is thus termed as CO in general.Scholars previously have studied the COC from multiple perspectives to describe and illustrate the idiosyncratically morphological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic characteristics of the COC (Jones,1988; Mittwoch,1988; Massam,1990; Pereltsvaig,1999a,1999b,2001; Liang,1999; Zhang,2000; Iwasaki,2007; Gao&Jin,2000; Sailer,2010). However, they take the verb as the focus and attempt to define the CO as a clear-cut and well-delimited category, neglecting the Gestalt properties of the COC. What is more, although most researchers have recognized that verbs used in the COC are intransitive, they do not explain why those intransitives can take an additional argument. Therefore, the present corpus-based thesis attempts to examine and expound the English cognate object constructions in the light of Goldberg’s construction grammar. Specifically speaking, the author with the holistic features of the COC in mind, proposes the Bidirectional Coercion Model by integrating the related theories of Construction Coercion and Lexical Coercion to conduct a tentative research on the generation path of the COC in the framework of Goldberg’s construction grammar. Major findings can be listed as follows:(1) Through construction coercion, the mismatch between the specifications of these intransitive verbs and the specifications of the COC is resolved by fusing the semantics of the monotransitive construction with the verbs.(2) The semantic restrictions on the access of intransitive verbs into the COC are related to the compatibility or the degree of conceptual overlapping between the conceptual structures of the filling verbs and the schematic structure. Therefore, COC-verbs should not only be prescribed syntactically as intransitive verbs but also semantically compatible with the schematic construction therein.(3) In regard to the semantic restrictions on the access of modifiers into the COC, the modifying element should semantically orient to the agentive subject instead of referring to the speaker.(4) With regard to the semantic restrictions on the access of determiners into the COC, the indefinite article a is the best article candidate entering the COC for it can aid the delivering of the creation sense.(5) By means of lexical coercion, the modifying elements coerce the CO into either a result reading or a manner interpretation. To be specific, the CO of unergative verbs can be ambiguous between the result reading and the manner or extent reading, depending on which aspect of the meanings of the verb is foregrounded. And yet, the CO with unaccusative verbs can only be interpreted as manner.(6) The COC and the VAC are considered as independent constructions with their own semantic, syntactic and pragmatic properties, which are, however, linked by a similarity relation. Though the two patterns are interchangeable in many cases, they cannot replace each other in language use for their unique semantic and pragmatic characteristics.The current thesis is organized into the following five chapters.Chapter One opens with research background and research questions, then proceeds to the significance of the current study, methodology and data collection, and ends with the layout of this thesis.Chapter Two provides a general review of the related studies on coercion by Talmy, Michaelis, Goldberg, Panther&Thornburg, and Taylor. Their advantages and disadvantages are presented and their differences from the Bidirectional Coercion Model are also illustrated here. Meanwhile, the previous researches on the COC are also examined and evaluated carefully in this section. They are generally categorized into four perspectives, that is, descriptive, generative, functional and cognitive perspectives. Their contributions and deficiencies are also pointed out and analyzed in this chapter.Chapter Three establishes the theoretical framework for the intended bidirectional coercion approach to the Cognate Object Construction in English which integrates the advantages of and discards the disadvantages of five types of coercion theories proposed by Talmy, Michaelis, Goldberg, Panther&Thornburg, and Taylor. The theoretical basis, validity and effectiveness, and the operative mechanism of the Bidirectional Coercion Model are also demonstrated and explicated in detail in this chapter. The bidirectional coercion model can be schematized as:Chapter Four, the part and parcel of the present study, applies the Bidirectional Coercion Model to the analysis of the generation path of the COC, its selective restrictions and the dynamic interactive relationship between the construction and its constituents with the extracted data, and also explicates the relationship between the COC and the VAC.Chapter Five ends the thesis by summarizing the major findings of the study, pointing out its limitations and proposing suggestions for further research in this area.