| Verb-particle constructions are also called phrasal verbs or verb particle combinations.The particle after the verb is a preposition or adverb.Construction grammar regards constructions as “pairing of form and meaning” or “pairing of form and functions”.The current studies mainly include non-native speakers’ cross-language comparative study of verb-particle constructions,and second language learners’ learning and application of verb particle constructions,as an extension of this study.Many scholars have paid attention to the symbolic relationship between the form and meaning of the construction,the structural and functional characteristics of the construction,the interaction between the morphemes of the construction and the schema network of the construction.But this kind of research mainly stays in the synchronic level,that is,through the synchronic corpus research.With the deepening of the research on construction grammar,the diachronic research on construction has received widespread attention.As Hilpert(2013)said,every verb-particle construction has its own growth history and is restricted by semantic,pragmatic and other contextual factors in the development process.V Out Construction is a frequently used category of verb particle construction,and because of its special semantic characteristics,in recent years,the study of this construction has attracted more and more attention.However,just like other verb-particle constructions,the study of V Out Construction is mainly limited to the static analysis of the meaning of the construction,and there is a lack of dynamic research on the meaning of the construction at the diachronic level.The change of construction productivity is the main basis to observe the dynamic development of construction.It is helpful to study the productivity of construction verbs to grasp the changing trend of the verb slot.At the same time,the improvement of construction productivity and the direction of its construction meaning extension also affect the diachronic change of construction semantics and syntax.The interaction between verb and construction is always accompanied by the whole process of semantic development.Therefore,the improvement of construction productivity is closely related to the diachronic development of semantic.In view of this,this study takes the diachronic development of the construction as the orientation,takes the usage-based construction grammar as the perspective,and combines the viewpoint of constructional change(Hilpert,2013;Traugott & Trousdale,2013),to observe the characteristics of the productivity of this construct.The purpose is to provide theoretical and methodology reference for the diachronic study of verb-particle construction through the case study of V Out Construction,and promote the development of studies on verb-particle construction.This study specifically answers the following questions:(1)How many time periods can the diachronic development of the V Out Construction be clustered into?(2)What morphemes are attractive to V Out Construction verb slots at different time periods?(3)In the diachronic development process,what characteristics does the variation of the productivity of V Out Construction have,and why?Based on the usage-based theory,under the framework of Construction Grammar and Constructionalization,we take COHA(American Diachronic English Corpus)as the corpus source,adopt the research method combining quantitative and qualitative methods,with the help of variability-based neighbor clustering and diachronic distinctive collexeme analysis,combined with R software,to explore the verb collexemes which are significantly attracted to V Out Constructions in different periods.The semantic change of V Out Construction is also summarized.Finally,based on these studies,we explain how verbs and Out work together to promote the productivity of the construction.The research findings are:(1)The VNC algorithm result of this research shows that the development of the V Out Construction can be clustered into 1820s-1840 s,1850s-1860 s,1870s-1900 s,1910s-1920 s and 1930s-2010 s.(2)In different time periods,collexemes which are strongly attracted by the target construction are different.The most distinctive collexeme in 1820s-1840 s is cry with its collostructional strength 4.92,and followed by pour,grow and shut.In 1850s-1860 s,the most strongly attractive verb with target construction is pour,and followed by cry,stretch,drive and throw.In 1870s-1900 s and 1910s-1920 s,the top three distinctive verb collexemes both are figure,cry and carry.In1930s-2010 s,cry is the most strongly attracted in verb-particle construction with its collostructional strength 5.04.There are359 verb collexemes of V Out Construction collected from the COHA.With the evolution of verb-particle construction,more types of verbs are used and different characteristics are shown in each period.(3)With the increase of schematicity and the decrease of compositionality,the productivity of V Out Constructions is increasing.The use of V Out Constructions is mainly concentrated on the meaning of indicating the means of action.The metaphorical expression of OUT extends the spatial experience given to people by the spatial relationship to the concepts of quasi-space and non-space,enabling people to establish the image association of abstract concepts and project them to non-spatial concepts by the experience of orientation.Different V Out Constructions have different degrees of evolution over time and show changing productivity.By analyzing the type frequency of verbs in V Out Constructions,we can summarize the productivity and semantic changes of the construction.Type frequency not only affects the productivity of the construction,but also can cause different degrees of evolution of the V Out Constructions itself,and thus generate the constructionalization,which provides a new approach for the diachronic study of constructions.And it is characterized by the simultaneous attention to the evolution of both forms and meanings of constructions. |
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