A Contrastive Study Of Peripheral Causative Construction In English And Chinese

Causative relation is the pervasive way of motion among entities.The peripheral causative construction is the conceptualization of peripheral causative events,which indicates an indirect causative relation.In terms of the commonality of human's cognitive thinking patterns towards the indirect causative relations,there exist some similarities on English and Chinese peripheral causative constructions.However,after all,the English and Chinese are two different languages.In expressing the same causative event,there must be some discrepancies on its syntactic forms and semantic meanings.This paper aims to make a contrast study of peripheral causative construction in English and Chinese based on Goldberg's construction grammar,Wolff's dynamic model and the prototype theory from the cognitive perspective.By analyzing the image schema of peripheral causative constructions,semantic parameters and semantic primitives,the semantic interactive relationship between the causer and causee,the author investigates the similarities and differences of Chinese“ ? / ? / ? / ? ” construction and English “make/have/cause/get”construction from both syntactic and semantic level and seeks for the cognitive explanations of the differences and similarities.The contrastive study of peripheral causative construction in English and Chinese is necessary due to the following reasons.Firstly,in the previous study,there is not so much research aiming to study the specific peripheral causative construction.Most of the relative research aims to discuss the cause-motion events or the resultative construction.Secondly,from the previous research,a lot of researchers study the causative relations from the traditional grammar,transformational generative grammar,grammatical blending theory and prototype theory from cognitive perspective.However,not so many researches investigate it from the construction grammar.Finally,in the previous study,the English and Chinese peripheral causative constructions have been studied respectively,there aren't so many researches investigating a contrastive study between English and Chinese.Indirect causative relation expressed in peripheral causative construction is a basic human concept.Generally speaking,this paper adopts the contrastive approach to do the research.The contrastive approach is a self-explanatory way,which aims to explore thedifference of two things.Here,we use the contrastive way to explore the differences and similarities of the two languages.Meanwhile,as a kind of causative constructions,the peripheral causative construction in English and Chinese would be analyzed in a cognitive way.Thus,the author will adopt the qualitative analysis.This paper consists of five chapters.Chapter one is the introduction of the research background and significance of the study,the research methods,data collection and the outline of the research.Chapter two is the literature review.It introduces the definitions of peripheral causative construction in English and Chinese in this paper and the previous study of it both abroad and home.The chapter three provides the theoretical framework.Chapter four focuses on the semantic features of causative auxiliaries in English and Chinese and analyses the semantic constraints of causer,causee and caused result in pure causative construction and permissive causative construction.Chapter five is the conclusion.The major findings of this paper are as following.Firstly,there exists a closed type of causative verbs in English and Chinese,namely the “ ? / ? / ? / ? ” in Chinese and“make/have/get/cause” in English,which can be divided into pure causatives and permissive causatives according to the difference of animacy of causer and the self-control of the Vp2.Secondly,in pure causative constructions,most of the causers have the feature of animacy and intention.However,there is a tendency for English to have more animate causers.In expressing the causative result,the English “make/have/get” constructions contain the semantic meaning that the caused result is realized,while the Chinese needs to seek for help from other linguistic elements to express the similar meaning.In the slot of Vp2,only descriptive adjectives can enter into the slot in Chinese.However,both the descriptive adjectives and the qualitative adjectives are acceptable in English.Thirdly,in permissive causative constructions,both the causer and causee are animate people with volition.The differences are in expressing the hierarchical relationship.The causer in “ ? 2” construction has hierarchical relations with the causee,while the “? 2” construction doesn't indicate this kind of relation.“Make2”and “have2”construction reflect the hierarchical relationships and“get2”construction doesn't show that.In terms of the volition of causee,there isn't obvious reflection on “? 2” and “? 2” construction.“Have2”,”get2” and “make2” construction can express the volition of the causee.However,they are different in semantic meaning.Thecausee in “make2” construction is fighting within itself and finally shows its volition.The causee in “have2” is willing to observe the order of the causer.The causee in “get2”construction shows its shift from non-volition to volition.Finally,the “have2,make2,get2”construction indicate the realization of the causative result,while it is uncertain in Chinese“? 2” and “? 2”construction.