An Online Corpus-based Study On English Light Verb Construction

Studies on English light verb are time-honored. With the rise of constructionalgrammar, people focus their researches on the English light verb construction. However,through a critical review of the findings and the achievements made by researchers, Ifind that previous researches on the English light verb construction have paid muchattention to the type in which a noun complement acting as the eventive object isconverted from a verb, for instance, take a sleep, do a dance and give a sigh, butseldom explore another type of the construction with a noun derived from a verb, suchas make a contribution, do some advertising. This imbalance is clearly not beneficial tothe systematic and comprehensive understanding and mastery of the English light verbconstruction.Based on the foresaid situation, this thesis devotes to investigating English Do Det.V-ing construction within the framework of cognitive linguistics includingconstructional grammar and decategorization theory. The paper adopts the methods ofcombining the quantitative study and qualitative study together, using the COCA corpus(Corpus of Contemporary American English) as the data, making a systematic andmulti-functional analysis of the typical and representative language phenomenon andmainly solves the next four questions:1What kinds of nominal complement in the nounslot are more strongly associated with Do Det. V-ing construction?2What are thesemantic features of Do Det. V-ing construction?3What are the characteristics ofparent verbs occurring in Do Det. V-ing construction?4What is the formationmechanism of Do Det. V-ing construction?Based on the corpus statistics, this thesis adopts the R software and Stefanowitschand Gries’s collostructional analysis to calculate the association strength between thenoun slot and Do Det. V-ing construction via the Fisher-Yates Exact test. This methodis rigorously quantitative and objective by combining the corpus linguistics andcognitive linguistics research methods effectively. It identifies the strength anddirection of association between the target construction and the noun occurring in thisconstruction. The semantic features of Do Det. V-ing construction are further explored so as to know about the underlying motivation behind this particular languagephenomenon, and try to conclude the formation mechanism of this type of construction.At last we can arrive at a scientific and systematic account of Do Det. V-ingconstruction. The study results show that:(1) By calculating the collostruction strength, the thesis analyzes the more stronglyassociated collexemes of Do Det. V-ing construction in order to find the interaction ofthe certain noun slot and the construction itself. The noun most strongly associated withDo Det. V-ing construction is shopping, followed by, cooking and talking,554out of558show significant attraction relationship, and4collexemes show repulsionrelationship with the target construction.(2)Not all simple verbs can occur in English Do Det. V-ing construction byattaching suffix-ing to the end of them. Among the554parent verbs, the ratio ofdynamic verbs is the largest one (97%), stative verbs and stance verbs only account for2%and1%respectively. Stative verbs seldom appear in this construction, becausenormally such verbs do not occur with the progressive. Only some stative verbs canappear in the target construction when denoting “private” states and emphasizingtentativeness. In terms of the dynamic verbs, momentary verbs make up3%of the total,97%belong to non-momentary verbs and possess some features: dynamic, agentive,controllable, and repeatable.(3) Do Det. V-ing construction has five semantic features: first, it refers to investsome time in the physical or mental activity or process, and merely emphasizes theaction or process itself rather than its content. Second, its typical semantics are relatedto people’s daily life, study, work and recreational activities. Third, the subject of thisconstruction is human being, the activity or process expressed by Do Det. V-ingconstruction usually has the characteristics of repeatability. Fourth, the eventive objectsare rarely modified by adjective or other modifiers. These adjectives are mostly used toeither emphasize the eventive object or to reveal the stage of the action. Last, unlike thetrue light verb construction, there is not an adjective-adverb correspondencerelationship between the Do Det. V-ing construction and its corresponding Simple VerbConstruction. (4) Viewed from cognitive linguistics, the formation mechanism of Do Det. V-ingconstruction is related to decategorization and coercion. The decategorization ofEnglish Do Det. V-ing Construction mainly refers to the decategorization of the verb doand the decategorization of the eventive object v-ing. Decategorization partiallychanges the grammatical properties of the verb do, makes it lose its referential meaningas well as its referential function, and at the same become “light”. This provides aprerequisite for the eventive object carrying the main construction meaning. Throughthe process of decategorization, the English v-ing loses some of its original categoricalfeatures and obtains some features of both noun category and verb category. To someextent coercion ensures the semantic acceptability of Do Det. V-ing construction.Because of the coercion of the determiner, eventive objects add the quantitative featuresand become bounded from unbounded.This paper will help us get detailed and comprehensive understanding about DoDet. V-ing construction and enrich existing studies on English light verb construction.