The Study Of Locative Construction Based On Croft's Event Structure Representation

As one of the three fundamental constructions in English,the two alternative forms of locative construction(content-locative and container-locative construction)have always been the focus in the field of linguistics.From the research path of generative grammar to that of construction grammar,previous scholars either use Pinker's broad-range and narrow-range rules for reference to study its acquisition or separate the verb semantics from the constructional meanings to research its alternative problems in one direction.We believe that the generation mechanism of locative alternative constructions is essentially a problem in the interface between syntax and semantics,which is neither top-down nor bottom-up one-way processing.However,our literature review illustrates that there are few scholars who explore the integration conditions of locative verbs and locative construction taking the lexical semantic characteristics of locative verbs as the starting point at present.Given this,this thesis based on the theory of Croft's event structure representation intends to prove from the perspective of geometry and dynamics that the semantics of locative verbs can encode an event framework,which presents the one-dimensional causal relationship and the two-dimensional aspectual structure of arguments profiled by verbs,and can integrate the two structures organically in three dimensions.Our research demonstrates that the syntactic realization of the arguments in locative alternative constructions is determined by the force-dynamic structure of causal relationship displayed in the event and the contribution of predicate semantics to aspectual types.The detailed conclusions are as follows.1)For the one-dimensional causal structure: content-oriented verbs can only encode a causal chain of “Agent ?Content ? Container”;container-oriented verbs can only encode a causal chain of“Agent?Content?Container”;and alternative verbs can encode two causal chains of“Agent ? Content ? Container” and “Agent ? Content ? Container”.2)For the two-dimensional aspectual structure: at the ideal VP syntactic level,content-oriented verbs can only profile an incremental accomplishment about the content;container-oriented verbs can only profile an incremental accomplishment about the container and an implicit undirected activity about the content;and alternative verbs canprofile an incremental accomplishment about the content,an incremental accomplishment about the container and an implicit undirected activity about the content at the same time.3)For the three-dimensional representation of causal and aspectual structure in events: if the use of a verb can only encode a complex event of an incremental accomplishment about the content,the verb is only popular in the content-locative construction;if the use of a verb can only encode a complex event of an incremental accomplishment about the container,the verb is only welcomed in the container-locative construction;if the use of a verb can encode a complex event of an incremental accomplishment about the content and a complex event of an incremental accomplishment about the container,the verb can be used in two alternative forms of locative construction.In a word,the integration of locative verbs and locative alternative constructions depends on the event structures of locative verbs.In terms of the contributions of this research,from a theoretical perspective,this thesis applies the theory of Croft's event structure representation to the study of locative construction for the first time,which provides a new study perspective for the study of locative construction at the syntactic and semantic level.From an application perspective,this study helps English learners to grasp the semantic meanings of verbs and their argument realization through effective and intuitive graphical representation patterns,thereby acquiring English locative construction.