A Contrastive Study Of English And Chinese Resultative Construction

Under the research background of cognitive linguistics,this paper mainly focuses on the following points:Firstly,the resultative construction is very unique and has always been a hot topic for Chinese and foreign language scholars.Its uniqueness and importance are particularly prominent in many constructions,which is self-evident and favored by scholars.In previous studies,most of them are confined to the exploration of the resultative construction in single language,and the resultative construction has its unique syntactic and semantic features in various languages,which lacks the study of the generality and individuality of the resultative construction across languages.Secondly,most domestic scholars have explored the characteristics of resultative constructions from the perspective of event structure,valence theory,diachronic and synchronic perspectives.But,the comparative study of syntactic and semantic of English and Chinese resultative constructions under cognitive grammar helps us to have a deeper understanding of resultative constructions.Therefore,this paper will use qualitative and quantitative analysis methods to discuss the following questions in five chapters from the perspective of Usage-based Theory and Construction Grammar in COCA and BCC corpora:（1）The similarities and differences of syntactic features between English and Chinese resultative constructions.（2）The similarities and differences of syntactic network between English and Chinese resultative constructions.（3）The similarities and differences of semantic constraints between English and Chinese resultative constructions.The findings of this study are as follows:（1）In the syntactic structures of English and Chinese resultative constructions,there are three basic components:S,V,R;O exists as a selective component in both languages.English syntactic structure has three kinds of word order:SVOR,SVRO,SVR;Chinese syntactic structure has eight kinds of word order:SVRO,SVR,SVOR,VR-Ba,SOVR,SV₁OV₂R,SVRO₁O₂,SV₁O₁V₂RO₂.Both have SVOR,SVRO,SVR three word order.（2）This paper discusses how the syntactic network of English and Chinese resultative constructions are constructed through the method of inheritance links and syntactic-semantic links.It is concluded that English and Chinese resultative constructions follow the universal linking rules and are subject to their own structure,meaning and cognitive constraints.The word order markedness of English and Chinese resultative constructions is also different.（3）After a comparative study of the semantic constraints of various components of English and Chinese resultative constructions,it is concluded that the subject of the resultative construction does not necessarily follow the principle of direct object restriction,and there are counterexamples in English and Chinese resultative constructions.The subject of Chinese resultative construction’s selection is more flexible than English.The semantic restriction differences between English and Chinese resultative constructions’verbs are reflected in the semantic types of verbs.The resultative phrases of resultative constructions are mainly used to study adjective phrases.In this paper,the choice of adjective phrases in English is based on Boas’s research,while the choice of Chinese is more extensive.Based on the existing research results of resultative construction,this paper will try to make a comparative study of English and Chinese resultative construction from the perspective of syntactic network architecture of usage-based theory and semantic constraints of construction grammar,following the research methods and technologies of cognitive linguistics.This is helpful for language learners to better understand the similarities and differences between English and Chinese resultative construction,and it is easier to master the differences and common laws between cross language sentence patterns.It also has certain guiding significance and practical value for foreign language teaching,second language acquisition and teaching Chinese as a foreign language.