| Semantic prosody has opened up an insightful way of analyzing lexico-semantic behaviors and has provided a new angle in understanding the meaning of a word and even a structure.But there are still many controversies in its theoretical interpretation.The previous studies of semantic prosody mainly focus on the empirical research of case analysis.It is hard for researchers to reach an agreement on its definition,classification criteria and so on.Construction grammar has received lots of concerns as cognitive linguistics is developing,of which construction grammar is a branch.Construction grammar is a usage-based theoretical sample that emphasizes what you see is what you get(Goldberg 1995),which is the same as the studies of semantic prosody that emphasize that language use plays a key role in language development.In addition,it is believed in construction grammar that the basic unit of language is the construction and the construction is regarded as a pairing of form and meaning,which also lay a foundation for analyzing semantic prosody from the perspective of construction grammar.Due to the lack of theoretical guidance,the development of semantic prosody research has also been limited.In view of this,this paper analyzes the new “X+?” construction from the perspective of construction grammar,trying to find some new discoveries and striving to provide a new theoretical perspective for solving the problems that mentioned above existed in studies of semantic prosody.This paper selects the new “X+?” construction and establishes a small corpus containing 500 sentences.From the perspective of construction grammar,this paper analyzes the tendency of the attitudinal evaluation meaning and the causes of formation of semantic prosody of the new “X+?”construction.This paper mainly analyzes the new “X+ ? ” construction from the angle of the attitudinal evaluation tendency,the formation of the constructional meaning,the performance of construction coercion and the diachronic change,the causes of the attitudinal evaluation meaning.Through the whole analysis,it can be found that: 1.The new “X+ ? ” construction shows obvious negative attitudinal tendency when using in specific contexts.Its negative semantic prosody is mainly formed by the lexical coercion of the word “?”.In addition,the causes of its negative semantic prosody also include the influence of contexts and pragmatic factors.2.The constructional meaning of the new “X+?” construction can be summarized as an object with characteristics of[+maximum degree] and [+ deeply rooted].The object,the word in “X” slot,is unrestricted and canrefer to anything in our daily life,such as people,concrete things,psychological activities,behaviors,social phenomenon and so on.The entire construction and words in it coerce each other,which contributes to the formation of the constructional meaning.3.Over time,the new “X+ ? ”construction experiences a developmental process of “body organs+?”>“NP+?”>“NP,VP,AP+? ” > “X+ ? ”.In this process,its constructional meaning also changes from a general term for malignant tumors to the constructional meaning that summarized in the second point.The significance of analyzing semantic prosody from the perspective of construction grammar can be summarized as follows: 1.It can extract the attitudinal evaluation tendency by summarizing the constructional meaning,and can avoid the influence of contexts and types of texts on the semantic prosody.Besides,it can also clearly distinguish the semantic prosody form the semantic preference.2.By analyzing the constructionalization and the diachronic change of a construction,researchers can take into account both the synchronic phenomenon of semantic prosody and the diachronic change of semantic prosody when they conduct semantic prosody research.3.Analyzing semantic prosody from the perspective of construction grammar can not only provide theoretical guidance and support for the study of semantic prosody,but also enrich the theoretical studies of semantic prosody and promote its further development.Therefore,through analyzing the semantic prosody of the new “X+?” construction,this paper concludes that the analysis of semantic prosody from the perspective of construction grammar is feasible both theoretically and practically.What's more,the two can promote each other.On the one hand,the construction grammar provides theoretical support for the study of semantic prosody;on the other hand,the study of semantic prosody from the perspective of construction grammar can also enrich the content of empirical research which is guided by construction grammar. |
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