Caused-motion construction is a kind of argument structure construction.Its construction meaning reflects the important causative movement phenomenon in human daily life: under the direct influence and action of a causer,the position of a causee changes and moves along a certain path.Its syntactic form is NP1 + V + NP2 + PP,in which NP1 is the causee,V is the verb of driving force,NP2 is the causee,and PP is the prepositional phrase indicating the movement path of the causee.Goldberg(1995)clearly defines the caused-motion construction,and proposes its prototype meaning and four extended meanings,and also analyzes its syntactic features and semantic types under the framework of construction grammar theory.Based on the conceptual blending theory,Fauconnier & Turner(1996)analyzes the integration operation in the generation of caused-motion constructions at the conceptual and linguistic levels.The productivity characteristics of constructions are derived from Langacker’s research on schema category theory(1987).Goldberg(1995,2006,2011,2016,2019)further develops schema category theory and proposes the concept of “partial productivity of constructions”,which demonstrates that the use of a construction is productive to some extent,but it is not fully productive.The productivity of construction is restricted by many factors.Thereafter,based on the theory of construction grammar,scholars have studied the cognitive basis of the meaning construct of caused-motion construction,the similarities and differences in the expression of caused-motion construction between English and Chinese,the verbs in caused-motion construction and the interaction between verbs and construction.It is found that most of the previous studies on caused-motion focuses on the interaction of construction meaning and component meaning at the synchronic level,but there is still a lack of empirical support for its diachronic change and quantitative statistics.As a construction with both conventionality and productivity,the diachronic analysis of language evolution of caused-motion construction is helpful to grasp the diachronic evolution of the caused-motion construction and the extension path of the whole caused-motion construction family.Therefore,this paper focuses on the partial productivity of caused-motion construction,and takes the Corpus of Historical American English(COHA)as the data source to investigate the diachronic evolution of caused-motion construction by using the quantitative corpus method.This paper will analyze the concrete manifestation of the partial productivity of caused-motion construction from the aspects of the diachronic development stage of caused-motion construction,the semantic change of verbs of driving force and the meaning extension of caused-motion construction.Specifically,this paper attempts to answer the following research questions:(1)How many stages has the caused-motion construction gone through? Is the diachronic development of this construction partially productive?(2)Which collexemes are strongly attracted with the caused-motion construction in each time period?(3)How does the partial productivity of the caused-motion construction behave?In order to answer the above questions,this paper constructs a comprehensive theoretical framework based on the usage-based theory,constructionalization and constructional change,construction coercion and conceptual blending theory.Taking the directional dynamic preposition into as a case study,352 verbs corresponding to the target construction from 1810 s to 2000 s are collected from the COHA.By using the methods of variability-based neighbor clustering analysis and diachronic distinctive collexeme analysis,this paper divides the time periods of the evolution of the caused-motion construction,sums up the verb categories and distribution in the target construction,and then analyzes the diachronic evolution law and trend of the caused-motion construction according to the semantic change of the verbs of driving force and the meaning extension of the caused-motion construction in different diachronic clustering periods.Major findings are presented as follows:(1)According to the results of variability-based neighbor clustering analysis,English caused-motion construction has experienced four clustering periods over 1810s-2000 s,which are 1810s-1820 s,1830s-1890 s,1900s-1960 s and 1970s-2000 s.According to the four development stages of caused-motion construction,the token frequency and type frequency of the target construction are calculated respectively to understand the overall situation of the evolution of caused-motion construction.The results show that in terms of the token frequency,the number of caused-motion constructions appears in 1810s-1820 s is only 580,and then the number of constructions increases sharply from 1830 s to 1890 s,the total number of which was nearly 20 times of the first stage,and maintains a high number in the following two stages.As far as the type frequency is concerned,the change trend is roughly the same as that of the token frequency,which causes the most types of target constructions in 1900s-1960 s,reaching 496.Goldberg(1995)proposes that type frequency is the general characterization of the productivity of construction.The higher the type frequency is,the more productive the construction is.The results show that the type frequency of caused-motion construction is slightly fluctuating in the period of diachronic development,but it still shows an increasing trend in general,which confirms the partial productivity of the construction.In addition,the number of the hapax legomena in each period also reflects the partial productivity of the target construction.(2)According to the four clustering time periods,it is found that there are 78 verb collexemes in 1810s-1820 s,232 in 1830s-1890 s,325 in 1900s-1960 s and 287 in1970s-2000 s.The results show that there are differences in the distribution of verb collexemes with strong attraction to the caused-motion construction.The number of verbs with attraction to the target construction in the four time periods is 78,230,322 and 285 respectively.According to the classification of verbs of driving force by Chen(2011),Luo(2015)and Levin(1993),the verbs in the target construction are divided into six categories: verbs of physical force,verbs of(physiological)behavioral force,verbs of verbal force,verbs of psychological force,verbs of uncertain force and other verbs(the latter five are collectively referred to as non-physical driving force).By analyzing the development trend of different types of driving force in each period,it can be concluded that the use significance of caused-motion construction mainly focuses on the lead force in 1810s-1820 s,and turns to the dispatch causative meaning in 1830s-1890 s.In the third stage,the main use of construction is expanded,and the meaning of dispatch,shape,verbal force and(physiological)behavior force is the dominant position.From 1970 s to 2000 s,the proportion of other verbs acting as driving force increases,and the semantic category of construction expands accordingly.(3)The partial productivity of caused-motion construction is manifested in the change of verb semantics and the extension of construction meaning.The causes and characteristics of the semantic changes of verbs in the caused-motion construction are related to the four factors: the causer,the causee,the driving force and directional displacement or path.The causative concept contained in the verb is highlighted and successfully entered into the caused-motion construction through construction coercion.With the diachronic evolution of construction,the physical driving force of caused-motion construction is increasing,and the frequency of non-physical driving force is also increasing.The extension of driving force from physical to non-physical shows that caused-motion construction is a continuum extending from grammatical construction representing prototype schema to non-conventionalized construction with low degree of conventionalization.The generation of the non-conventionalized caused-motion construction is the result of the conceptual blending of the prototype caused-motion construction and real displacement event.The non-physical force expands the unconventional temporary causative meaning through metaphor,which can also affect the state of the causee.The increase of the non-conventionalized caused-motion construction with non-physical force as driving force adds impetus to the productivity of the whole caused-motion construction family.However,due to its limited frequency and the restriction of the construction semantics by the real social context,it has led to the partial productivity characteristic of the caused-motion construction. |