| Due to the enormous differences between Chinese and English, it is very easy for Chinese learners to be affected by negative transfer from native language during the process of language learning, which can hinder the acquisition of English. Therefore, scholars employ contrastive analysis to identify the similarities and differences between Chinese and English to decrease the difficulty and promote the efficiency of English learning. However, the previous studies tend to focus on one aspect of language, such as the lexical meanings or implied meaning of sentences. Nonetheless, students usually acquire these language aspects at the same time. Construction grammar believes that the basic unit of a language is the pairing of meaning and form, namely, construction. Therefore, the study of language from the perspective of construction grammar means the study of form and meaning simultaneously. Since verbs, as the core of sentences, have always been a hot topic in the field of second language acquisition, the study selects two high-frequency verbs “ti†and “kick†as research objects and made contrastive research within the framework of Goldberg’s construction grammar. Through a comprehensive analysis of “ti†and “kickâ€, the study is aimed at providing a new perspective for learning similar verbs for Chinese English-learners as well as some reference for the future analysis of constructions of these body-related verbs.The thesis contrasts “ti†and “kick†from three aspects, namely, polysemy, word formation and syntactic structure, and analyzes the similarities and differences of construction “ti†and “kick†at the level of lexicon and syntax, followed by the reasons accounting for these similarities and differences. At the lexical level which consists of polysemy and word formation, the thesis starts with the summary of the diverse meanings of “ti†and “kick†summarized from the data of both dictionaries and corpora and then contrasts these meanings. At the word-formation level, the same method is employed. At the syntactic level, constructions of “ti†and “kick†from CCL and COCA are summarized on the basis of the classification of constructions by Goldberg. The analysis of constructions of “ti†and “kick†in two corpora reveals several conclusions listed in the following part. Firstly, from the perspective of lexical meanings, the core meanings of Chinese word “ti†and English word “kick†are the same whereas their extensive meanings differ greatly. In terms of word formation, “ti†can be followed by verbs, nouns, adverbs and even monosyllable “de†and the new-formed words normally obtain a new meaning which differs from the meaning of “ti†greatly. By contrast, “kick†can only form new compounds with nouns and adverbs and the new-formed words retain the core meaning of “kickâ€. At the level of syntax, “ti†can appear in Intransitive construction, Transitive construction, Ditransitive construction, Caused-Move construction and Resultative construction whereas “kick†is not compatible with Ditransitive construction. In addition, though some constructions of “ti†can be categorized into the above mentioned types, they differ slightly in form, which indicates that the usage of “ti†in syntactic level is more flexible than “kick†in English. The differences of the usage between constructions “ti†and “kick†can be illuminated by the diverse cultural backgrounds of speakers.Findings of this research can enrich the application of construction grammar into contrastive analysis between Chinese and English. Moreover, in the field of second language teaching, teachers can adopt the method of teaching the usage of English verbs by means of constructions. In addition, the results show that despite the similar core meaning of “ti†and “kickâ€, the latter is not compatible with ditransitive construction. Therefore, in translation, with awareness of the difference between “ti†and “kick†in this aspect, translators may avoid the mistake of employing the ditransitive construction into “kick†in the process of translation. |
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