A Cognitive-pragmatic Study Of English Cognate Object Construction

Cognate Object Construction (COC for short) in English is a special linguisticphenomenon. It is formed by an intransitive verb and its cognate noun somehowmodified. Many domestic and foreign scholars have described its syntactic andcognitive properties from different angles, but still there remain things inconclusive.For example, must there be a modifier before the cognate object (CO)? If so, whatmotivates the necessity of modifying the CO? Since the predicate verb in the COC isintransitive, what makes it possible for it to take an object? Is there any instantiationof COC in Chinese? What are the differences between the construction V-yi-V inChinese and the COC in English? In this thesis, we attempt to provide answers tothese questions.Firstly, we approach the necessity of qualifying the CO from pragmatic andcognitive perspectives. From the viewpoint of pragmatic informational focus, themodifier of the CO expresses non-presupposed information and carries the normalstress. Therefore, it constitutes the natural focus of an entire sentence. On the otherhand, in the light of the cognitive mechanisms developed in the construal theory, themodifier of the CO highlights the difference between the profile (i.e. the specificevent denoted by the CO linked with the property characterized by the modifierphrase) and the base (i.e. the event kind denoted by the predicate verb), andmetaphorically alludes to the path along which the subject referent (i.e. the trajector)moves against the background event (i.e. the landmark) designated by the predicateverb towards a telic point which is the specific event denoted by the CO together withits modifier. In another sense, the modifying element brings prominence to theresultativeness as well as boundedness of the verb-denoted event in its beingsummarily scanned by the CO.Secondly, by adopting a construction grammar approach, the thesis tentativelyexplains the cause for the transitive use of the intransitive verb in the COC. We compare the COC with typical transitive constructions based on Hopper&Thompson’s (1980) view on transitivity and conclude that COC is likewise atransitive construction. Meanwhile, the thesis reformulates the constructional meaningof the COC as being “X volitionally does the act of Z in a bounded qualified Y way”.Thereby the intransitive verb is coerced by the construction to take an object.Lastly, the thesis describes the semantic and syntactic features of the ChineseV-yi-V construction and compares it with the COC in English, drawing the followingconclusions: while these two constructions share a similar surface form and bothinvolve a semantic bleaching of the verb and the bounded reading of the construction,there are remarkable differences between the CO in COC and the “yi-V” in “V-yi-V”in terms of both syntactic properties and semantic features. Therefore, the ChineseV-yi-V construction is not a true COC.