A Force-Dynamic Approach To Enabling Causative Construction

As a crucial subcategory of causative structure,enabling causative construction plays an important role in the causative studies,which can conducive to the study of process in causation..Nowadays,many scholars at home and abroad mostly focus their research on semantic description and classification,but less on their cognitive semantic construction,distribution of morphosyntax,force-dynamic parameters,prototypes and non-prototypes and cognitive pragmatics.Therefore,under the framework of force dynamics,this study proposes a new force-dynamic schema system for the enabling causative construction,and explores its comprehensive properties through corpus,targeting for three questions:(1)What are the morphosyntactic features of enabling causative construction?(2)What is force-dynamic features of enabling causative construction? And what are the prototypes and non-prototypes of it?(3)How are the cognitive domains and semantic prosody distributed in enabling causative construction?In view of this,in this study we randomly selected 2000 enabling constructions(X ENABLE Y to V)with 1932 valid corpora from the en Ten Ten 2020 corpus in Sketch Engine,and analyzed its morphosyntax,cognitive semantics and pragmatic characteristics in turn.In addition,the force dynamic prototype and non-prototype of this construction were summarized.The study found that:(1)The syntactic forms of the four slots in the construction are mainly used in conjunction with a single noun(60.0%),simple present tense(55.7%),personal pronouns(72.1%)and infinitives(73.0%);(2)The characteristics of force-dynamic parameters are that the ENABLER is mainly unintentional(71.0%),indirect(60.0%)and uninvolved(60.0%),and the ENABLEE is mainly controllable(65.0%)and volitional(71.0%),along with little difference between the onset and extended causation for ENABLE,and finally the status of result being uncertain in a large proportion(60.0%);meanwhile,the force dynamic prototype of the construction conforms to the force dynamic framework assumed in this study,but a necessary variable,X,needs to be added,like the ENABLER and the ENABLEE must be in contact to generate the force.Furthermore,under the influence of other factors such as form and meaning,the force dynamic non-prototype of the construction can also be generated.(3)The cognitive pragmatics characteristics of the enabling causative construction can be demonstrated in the trans domains like in physical,social,and mental domains where the integration of physical and mental domain covers the largest proportion(52.5%);besides,it is also mainly manifested as the social force of the enabler,to a certain extent,acting by words,and its semantic prosody is mainly positive(96.2%);In this research,we employ force-dynamic method to study enabling causative construction which can promote cognitive research on causative structures and theoretical meaning and application of constructional studies,explore the cognitive mechanisms behind causative structures more deeply,spur the development of cognitive semantics with significant theoretical and realistic value and enlighten the teaching of enabling causative in the daily life.