The Coercion Of English Progressive Construction On Achievement Verbs From The Perspective Of Croft’s Classification Of Lexical Aspects

Illustrating ongoing process at a specific temporal point or during a temporal interval,the English progressive aspect is characterized by two semantic features:dynamicity and duration.Achievement verbs and stative verbs flout these two features.Therefore,they are incompatible with the English progressive aspect.However,in practice,numerous achievement verbs are observed occurring with the English progressive aspect with diverse interpretations and pragmatic functions.Previous studies of the English progressive aspect with achievement verbs mainly focus on semantic features and pragmatic functions.Flourishing in recent decades,cognitive linguistics,especially construction grammar is gradually implemented by scholars to solve the contradiction between achievement verbs and the English progressive aspect and account for the polysemy of the English progressive aspect with achievement verbs.There are different coercion phenomena between achievement verbs and the English progressive construction which contributes to different interpretations.However,previous studies fail to provide an explanation covering all these phenomena and adopt Vendler’s lexical classification which sorts verbs into only four types.This coarse-grained quartering of verbs blurs some features of verbs,especially the distinctions among activity verbs.Based on Croft’s aspectual types,a prototype-based category of the concept ACTIVITY is proposed in this thesis.This prototype-based category is applied to analyze the coercion phenomena between the English progressive construction and achievement verbs.The research questions to be answered in this thesis are: 1)What does the English progressive construction coerce achievement verbs into? 2)What are the mechanisms of the coercion of English progressive construction on achievement verbs? 3)How can the mechanisms account for the multiple interpretations of the English progressive construction with achievement verbs? Comparing previous ideas and analyzing the features of Croft’s two types of activities,this thesis defines “dynamicity” and“duration” as the constructional meanings of the English progressive construction.A prototype-based category of the concept ACTIVITY is also proposed and “causal control”,“dynamicity”,and “duration” are regarded as the three properties of this category.When incompatible with the English progressive construction,the situation denoted by an achievement verb will be coerced into an activity belonging to this prototype-based category by the English progressive construction.Scalar adjustment and conceptual metonymy are regarded as the mechanisms of the coercion of English progressive construction on achievement verbs.When coarse-grained scalar adjustment is adopted,achievement verbs are coerced into undirected activities or directed activities.Through this coercion,the English progressive construction with achievement verbs will have the interpretation of repetition or overall trend.Generally,the punctual change denoted by an achievement verb entails a preceding phase which will have features of dynamicity and duration if conforming to the prototype-based category ACTIVITY.When fine-grained scalar adjustment is adopted,the achievement verb in the English progressive construction can refer to this neighboring dynamic durative process through part-part metonymy,which contributes to the interpretation of preparatory stage or plan.68468 sentences from BNC(the British National Corpus)are collected and analyzed,which prove the hypotheses in this paper.The findings in this paper are: First,the English progressive construction coerces the aspectual type of an achievement verb into an activity which belongs to the prototype-based category ACTIVITY.Second,scalar adjustment and conceptual metonymy are the mechanisms of the coercion of English progressive construction on achievement verbs.Third,coarse-scalar adjustment contributes to the interpretation of repetition and the interpretation of overall trend,and the synergy of fine-grained scalar adjustment and part-part metonymy can count for the interpretation of preparatory stage and the interpretation of plan.Different from previous studies,this thesis provides a systemic account for the coercion phenomena between the English progressive construction and achievement verbs.In particular,it accounts for the interpretation of plan.The prototype-based category ACTIVITY proposed in this thesis also gives enlightenment for further studies of the interaction between the English progressive construction and other lexical aspects.