| As a universal phenomenon in the objective world and basic experience emerged by the interaction between human and the world,causation is also an important semantic-grammatical category in linguistics.Therefore,there are rich causative expressions in language.The earlier studies on causative structures are conducted from the two aspects,namely causative sentence patterns and causative verbs.There exists a close relation between causative sentence pattern and causative verb.It is believed that causative verb has always been the focus of the study on causative structures and it is also difficult for English learners.Therefore,causative verb has attracted extensive attention and interest of linguists at home and abroad.According to earlier studies on causative verbs,causative verbs can be classified into lexical causative verbs,morphological causative verbs and causative auxiliary verbs.In addition,both domestic and foreign scholars have carried out studies on causative auxiliary verbs,but only the typical causative verbs are included,such as make,cause,let,have and get.From the perspective of Talmy’s force-dynamic model and corpus,scholars analyzed these typical causative verbs to explore the semantics of causative verbs.However,it is found that the study range of causative auxiliary verbs is limited and few scholars study English causative constructions based on construction grammar and cognitive grammar.On the basis of relative research of causative verbs,this study selects the major causative verbs make,cause,let,have,get and keep as research objects,aiming to combine cognitive grammar with construction grammar to discuss and analyze English causative constructions,and tries to explore the following three questions:1.What are the major kinds of English causative constructions?2.What are the conceptual structures embodied by these English causative constructions?3.What are the polysemy features of these English causative constructions?In general,the analysis on dictionary data and corpus data has been applied to explore the conceptual structure and polysemy of English causative constructions.To be specific,the author first collects grammatical structures and language examples of selected causative verbs in the dictionary,and sorts out the data to conclude English causative constructions.After that,under the guidance of cognitive grammar theory the author analyzes conceptual structures of English causative constructions.Finally,the number of causative verbs is expanded on the basis of corpus retrieval,and the polysemy of English causative constructions is further interpreted.Through qualitative and quantitative analysis,the study draws the following three conclusions:1.The grammatical structures of causative verbs can be summarized into five English causative constructions:(1)[X + CV + Y +(to)do];(2)[X + CV + Y + adj];(3)[X + CV + Y + doing];(4)[X + CV + Y + done];(5)[X + CV + Y + pp]2.To analyze conceptual structures of English causative constructions based on cognitive grammar theory:(1)[X + CV + Y +(to)do]: agent causes patient to perform a certain act;(2)[X + CV + Y + adj]: agent causes patient to have undergone a change of state;(3)[X + CV + Y + doing]: agent causes patient to perform a progressive action;(4)[X + CV + Y + done]: agent causes a patient to be agent of another patient and causes the change of state of the later patient;(5)[X + CV + Y + pp]: agent causes patient to move into a certain location3.Based on the analysis of corpus data,the polysemy features of each English causative construction are revealed as follows:(1)[X + CV + Y +(to)do]: five types of constructional meaningsThe prototypical meaning: agent causes patient to perform a certain act;Periphrastic meanings: agent enables patient to perform a certain act;agent causes patient to perform a certain act against patient’s will;agent promotes patient to perform a certain act;agent causes patient to perform a certain act with the agent’s strong will;(2)[X + CV + Y + adj]: four types of constructional meaningsThe prototypical meaning: agent causes patient to have undergone a change of state;Periphrastic meanings: agent causes patient to stay a certain state;agent promotes patient to have undergone a change of state;patient has undergone a change of state in the subjective level of agent;(3)[X + CV + Y + doing]: four types of constructional meaningsThe prototypical meaning: agent causes patient to perform a progressive action;Periphrastic meanings: agent causes patient to stay a progressive action;agent hinders patient to perform a progressive action;patient performs a progressive action in the subjective level of agent;(4)[X + CV + Y + done]: three types of constructional meaningsThe prototypical meaning: agent causes a patient to be agent of another patient and causes the change of state of the later patient;Periphrastic meanings: agent causes a patient to be agent of another patient and causes to stay the state of the later patient;agent causes a patient to be agent of another patient and causes the change of state of the later patient by intention;(5)[X + CV + Y + pp]: five types of constructional meaningsThe prototypical meaning: agent causes patient to move into a certain location;Periphrastic meanings: agent causes a patient to be in location;agent causes a patient to stay in a certain location;agent enables a patient to move into a certain location;agent hinders a patient to move into a certain location.To sum up,this study is of certain theoretical and practical significance.From the level of theory,this study attempts to analyze and examine English causative verbs from the perspective of cognitive and construction grammar,which is to enrich and perfect cognitive grammar and construction grammar.From the level of practice,causative verbs are a kind of important grammatical phenomenon in the language,which has cross-language universality.Besides,it is difficult for any foreign language learners to master.It is of guiding significance to systematically analyze the rules of English causative constructions for foreign language teaching. |
PDF Full Text Request