"From X To Y" Construction Research

This paper describes and explains the construction of Chinese "cong X dao Y" from the perspective of construction grammar,taking into account both diachronic and synchronic studies.The Chinese "cong X dao Y" is a construction representing the meaning of "range",which means "the whole or each individual within the range of finishing point X and starting point Y,or the changing process".In the components,the constant "cong" is a preposition,"dao" is between the verb and the preposition,and the variables of "X" and "Y" have symmetry and asymmetry in syllable and part of speech.The construction of Chinese "cong X dao Y" has relatively complete syntactic functions,mainly serving as the five syntactic components of a sentence.When used as an adverbial,the construction has the function of limiting the scope and mode of action of the predicate,indicating the changing process of the predicate and limiting the condition of the predicate verb.In terms of pragmatic function,the structure of "cong X dao Y" has a flexible form of change,and forms the expression effect of rhetorical functions such as "metonymy,return and climax" in linguistic performance.In terms of the polysemy on construction,the core meaning of this construction is showing spatial scope.Under the action of metaphor mechanism and metonymy mechanism,the meaning of spatial scope extends and expands to the meaning of non-spatial categories such as time,people,things,behaviors,characters,events and quantitative scope.Between the corresponding constructions of core meaning and non-core meaning,the meaning of spatial scope radiates outwards,forming a huge inheritance family of constructions.From a diachronic perspective,the grammaticalization on construction of Chinese "cong X dao Y" is based on the evolution of Chinese "cong,dao".Under the action of reanalysis and analogy mechanism,the construction of Chinese"cong X dao Y" inherited the syntactic and semantic functions of Chinese "cong X zhi Y",and completed the construction in the Eastern Han Dynasty.After that,the "cong X dao Y"was constantly improved,and under the action of the metaphorical mode,its semantics developed and evolved from concrete to abstract,from the original meaning of spatial scope to a variety of more abstract meaning of scope by metaphor.