A Cognitive Grammar Account Of The English Delexical Verb Construction

English Delexical Verb Construction(hereafter referred to as DVC)is a common linguistic structure which generally has a tripartite configuration: a delexical verb,an indefinite article and an eventive noun,such as have a sit,have a kick and so on.In this construction,the meaning of the delexical verb is almost lost,and the semantic content of the whole construction is conveyed by the eventive noun.To some extent,the meaning of English DVC is roughly equivalent to that of its simple verb construction(hereafter referred to as SVC)which is denoted by the verbal form of the eventive noun.Since English DVC appears,many scholars at home and abroad have explored it from different perspectives and made outstanding contributions.However,when reviewing previous studies of English DVC,we observe that most scholars focus on the formal features,generative mechanisms and pragmatic functions of English DVC;however,few scholars have systematically expatiated on the cognitive mechanisms of English DVC.In recent years,with the development and improvement of cognitive grammar,many linguistic problems that were not solved in the past have been explicated reasonably.Therefore,the cognitive mechanisms of English DVC will be analyzed within the framework of cognitive grammar.The research method of description and explanation will be adopted and the Corpus of Contemporary American English will be employed as the source of data to describe the semantic and syntactic features of English DVC.At the same time,the cognitive mechanisms of English DVC will be explained from the perspective of cognitive grammar.To be more specific,by the means of mental scanning,conceptual metonymy and bounding mechanism,the cognitive mechanisms of English DVC can be elucidated in terms of the scanning modes,metonymic connections and cognitive motivations behind the preference for English DVC.In view of the fact that there are many delexical verbs in English and in order to analyze English DVC in more detail,only have and its variants are selected as the research object.After an elaborate description and explanation,four conclusions can be drawn:Firstly,in terms of the semantic features,English DVC shows high telicity and weak continuousness;as for the syntactic features,English DVC reflects low transitivity and strong insertion of preposition.Secondly,English SVC and DVC denote two different mental scanning modes,namely,sequential scanning and summary scanning.Both scanning modes are appropriate for three different kinds of situations depicted by English SVC and DVC,that is,dynamic event,static event and spatial motion.Thirdly,although the mental scanning modes of English SVC and DVC are distinct,metonymic connections can be built between them.More specifically,there are two different metonymic connections between them: thing for process metonymy and whole event for sub-event metonymy.Fourthly,bounding mechanism can expound the achievement of boundarization of English DVC and the cognitive motivation behind the preference for English DVC.Indefinite article makes an event depicted by English DVC bounded,which is consistent with our perception of the objective world.In addition,due to the bounded experience of time and space dimension that a conceptualizer can sense,English DVC is more preferred in daily life.The discussion of the cognitive mechanisms of English DVC will help to clarify the cognitive motivations behind it and broaden the application of cognitive grammar.What is more,it also has certain practical significance for the grammar teaching of English DVC.