（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）英语中动结构的认知分析.pdf

华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 v 摘 要 英语中动结构因涉及复杂的句法 语义和词汇关系 一直是人们研究讨论的热点 对这种特殊的语法 语义现象的阐释传统的语言学主要是围绕中动结构的生成机制和 其中动词体的归属两个问题展开 本文概括了对中动结构生成机制和动词归属的争论 以及存在的不足 从文献中我们可以看到传统的语法角度无法对中动结构的生成和动 词的特性做出一个满意的解释 认知语言学认为语言不只是来自客观世界也不只是简单的语法现象语言的形 成受制于多种因素包括外在的物质世界生理和感知能力认知能力的发展认知 结构等因此我们不能够脱离客观的物质世界和人的认知能力去分析各种语言现象 本文首先从认知语言学中的基本层次范畴理论出发分析了英语中动结构在语法结构 和语义上的特性其次从兰盖克的能量传递理论出发对中动结构的认知基础进行了 分析 视角侧面和基地的理论解释了中动结构的生成源于人们对于事物以及相关联 事件的不同认知过程而且能量传递理论中的三个要素即能量的传递内在的力量 以及状态的改变解释了中动结构中动词的特性对于毁灭类接触类以及创造类的 动词不能用于中动结构之中本文也进行了解释同时由于缺乏对涉及其中事件的自 发程度的考虑兰盖克对中动结构的分析显示出了他的不足之处本文结合戴维森的 理论对之进行了改进并且进行了进一步的解释对于中动结构的讨论在实践上对英 语教学有指导意义 关键词中动结构 基本层次范畴 中动动词 能量传递 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 iii abstract english middle construction, which involves a complex interlay between syntax and semantics, is one of the most heatedly discussed topics in linguistics. the traditional research on english middle construction focuses on the syntactic or the lexical basis. it is mainly centered on two topics: the derivation of english middle construction and the aspectual properties of the verb in it. but current analyses showed that no satisfactory account of english middle construction has so far been reached. it seems that the traditional method can not provide a solid explanation to the derivation of english middle construction and the special characteristics of middle verbs. cognitive linguistics is different from the traditional explanation of grammatical structure and word meaning. it is an approach to language that is based on our experience of the world and the way we perceive and conceptualize the world. in this thesis an alternative analysis of english middle construction is provided from the cognitive point of view. the theory of basic level category is adopted to analyze the special syntactic and semantic characteristics of english middle construction and middle verbs. the theory of energy transmission, which is put forward by langacker, provides a new angle for the analysis of english middle construction. it is analyzed from the point of perspective, profile and base, which form the underlying cognitive basis for the derivation of english middle construction. also it is advocated that three necessary elements, which are the energy transmission, the inner power and the change of state, can be used to judge the acceptability of english middle construction. at the same time the unacceptability of some types of verb as destroy, contact and create are explained 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 iv from the point of energy transmission. and some improvement has been made to langackers explanation of english middle construction due to the lack of consideration about the autonomous degree of the events involved in english middle construction. keywords: english middle construction middle verb basic level category energy transmission 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 ii acknowledgements i would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude to all those who have given me much help in my pursuit of the masters degree and in my thesis writing. first of all, i would like to express my special thanks to my supervisor, associate professor liang li, who has offered me insightful comments and enlightening suggestions in the whole course of my thesis writing. without her patient instructions, i could hardly have completed my thesis. my deepest gratitude also extends to professor fan weiwei, xu mingwu, qin xiaoqing and associate professor zhang jinquan for their invaluable suggestions in the early stage of writing this thesis. it was a great experience to spend such a happy time with my classmates. i benefited a lot from them in all aspects. i especially want to thank liu xiaoxiao, the monitor of my class, for her patient and timely help to me during this year. lastly, i want to extend my heartful gratitude to my husband for his numerous help and support given to me on countless occasions. 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 1 1 introduction english middle construction, such as glass breaks easily (keyser roberts, 1987; stroik, 1992, 1995; hoekstra zribi-hertz, 1993; ackema and schoorlemmer, 1995) argue that english middle construction is not derived syntactically but formed in the lexicon. but both of them can not make their claim tenable, which i will discuss later in my thesis. the aspectual properties of english middle construction is also discussed often by the linguists. vendler (1967) and dowty (1979) divided verbs into four different aspectual classes: states, activities, accomplishments and achievements. many linguists held their different opinions for the aspectual classes of the verb in english middle construction, but still no agreement and no argument can confirm its aspectual properties. fagan (1992) argued that verbs that belong to the aspectual classes of states and achievements do not undergo middle formation in english: 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 2 1) a. * ice cream likes easily. (state) b. *this contest wins easily. (achievement) but not all writers agree that both activity and accomplishment verbs can undergo middle formation and the detailed discussion will be given in the literature review. smith (1978) offered the notion of change of state to the verb in english middle construction, but he can not give further explanation about what is the exact definition for the change of state of the verb in it and what kind of change can be called the change the verb denotes. these questions need to be answered first before calling it a convincing judgment. after the discussion around some analyses, which focus on grammatical or semantic basis, i provide an alternative study from the point of cognitive linguistics in this thesis. the cognitive linguistic approach is quite different from the traditional explanation of grammatical structures and word meanings. it advocated that what the words of a given language mean and how they can be used in combination depends on the perception and categorization of the real world. therefore it focuses on the conceptual nature of our mental representations and argues that language is governed by general cognitive principles, rather than by a special-purpose language module. today there are three main approaches in the cognitive linguistics: the experiential view, the prominence view and the attentional view. the experiential view is built upon psychological studies of cognitive categories, which lead to the prototype model of categorization. one key basis for this approach is metaphor, the figurative language which can transfer our experience of well-known objects and events to less familiar categories, especially some abstract categories like time, emotions, etc. many researchers have 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 3 explored the wide use of metaphors and enriched the studies in this approach. the prominence view goes beyond logical reasoning and objectivity and concerns the selection and arrangement of the information that is expressed. it advocates that “the selection of the clause subject is determined by the different degree of prominence carried by the elements involved in a situation” (langacker, 1987). the attentional view is based on the assumption that what we actually express reflects which parts of an event attract our attention. the main descriptive devices of this approach are the notions of frame and perspective. in this thesis we will adopt the theory of basic level category in the experiential view and the theory of energy transmission put forward by langacker in the prominence view. categorization can be observed at every level of cognitive processing. we categorize to determine what to pay attention to, what to talk and understand what to remember and what to reason. rosch (1976) showed that certain areas of reality are richer than others with respect to the set of functional and perceptive cues people can find and those categories corresponding to those areas are basic level and must be distinguished from higher or lower level categories. from a linguistic perspective, basic level category makes up the core of the nominal and verbal vocabulary of a language and provides the conceptual basis, though the boundaries of it remain vague. the specific requirements and the semantic property of the verb in english middle construction lend it the status of basic level category. and i analyzed the events involved in english middle construction from the point of the stereotypical relation of nouns and verbs and the gestalt principle, which are two important methods to explain the basic level event category. 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 4 additionally, langackers energy transmission theory provides a new angle of view for us to analyze the special cognitive basis of english middle construction. first, the existence of energy transmission is a necessity for english middle construction no matter the verb in it is transitive or intransitive. second, the ease or difficulty of carrying out the action is attributed to the inner power of relevant object. last, the change of state also accounts for the acceptability of english middle construction. meanwhile the unacceptability of some types of verb as destroy, creation and contact in english middle construction is discussed in this thesis. at the same time, some improvement has been made in this thesis to langackers explanation of english middle construction by absorbing davidses transitivity and ergativity idea. the examples i use in this thesis come from two parts: some sentences are quoted from the original articles in the bibliography. others are chosen from the corpus which is composed of 5550 sentences representing 102 verbs which come from 50,000 advertisement websites. that is to say what i used in this thesis are the accepted standard english middle constructions and not the invented ones. also the asterisk is used to point out the unacceptable sentences. this thesis consists of four parts, the contents of which are as follows: in part 1, the purpose and the main idea are introduced. in part 2, the definition of english middle construction is given semantically and the characteristics of it are discussed first. the theory of basic level category and energy transmission are introduced separately. also the idea of syntactical and lexical derivation toward english middle construction and the research on the aspectual properties of the verbs in it are discussed. 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 5 in part 3, the cognitive analysis of english middle construction is given from the point of basic level category. middle verbs and the events involved in are analyzed from the point of basic level category in this section. in part 4, the cognitive analysis of english middle construction is given from the point of energy transmission theory. the specific requirements of english middle construction are analyzed and some improvement has been made to langackers explanation in this section. in part 5, the theoretical contributions and the teaching implication are discussed. and some limitations and suggestions for further research are mentioned. 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 6 2 literature review 2.1 the definition of english middle construction middle construction exists in many languages, but no accurate definition is given till now. ackema but it has a major drawback - it is very fragile. no matter what the lock or the frame is if the glass breaks easily, entry is quickly achieved. - (keepsafe: ) passage (1) is an article about how to keep your gun safe. when describing the shortcoming of the wooden gun cabinets or display cases with glass, the author used passive construction to emphasize that someone will easily break the glass to steal the gun, so that you can not protect your gun. while in passage (2) it is an advertisement about a special glass, which can be used in households. what the author wants the reader to know something about the glasss specific property, so he used middle construction to describe the easily broken glass. 2.2.3 the difference between english ergative construction and middle construction similar to middle construction, ergative construction is also a construction different from transitive and intransitive construction. and it is quite similar to middle construction in form for it also takes the active form to take some passive-like meaning. for example: 6) a. the butter melted. b. your pen writes badly. in example (6), sentence (a) is an ergative construction while sentence (b) is a middle construction. and similar to middle verb, ergative verb has its corresponding transitive construction: 7) a. they broke the vase. b. the vase broke. 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 10 and also many linguists have analyzed their different syntactic and semantic characteristics (fagan, 1988; keyser vehicle the basic level object apple, peach, grapeberry, nut; car, bus, truck the subordinate object delicious apple, macintosh apple; sports car, saloon from the above examples, we can know that the superordinate categories have fewer defining features than basic level categories. and subordinate categories have lower distinctiveness from members of neighboring categories. basic level categories display higher-class inclusion than superordinate and subordinate level categories. thus urgerer long jump, high jump, vault, pole vault, triple jump in the above examples, we may find that the subordinate actions described some specific character of the movement, as time, place, style, degree. the basic level actions are some commonly used movement we get most familiar with. moreover the superordinate, basic level and subordinate category can also be applied in the events for there exists strong cognitive dependence between the objects and the actions when describing the events. for example: the superordinate event : transportation entertainment the basic level event : driving a bus having a dinner the subordinate event : steering the wheel nipping brandy 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 13 braking a car devouring the food entertainment belongs to the superordinate event category for it does not send any information about a specific event in it, and the events as nipping brandy, devouring the food are just the specific processes in the event of having a dinner, and they do no have the gestalt properties. rifkin (1985) once made experiments and found that informants could produce large numbers of attributes for basic level event categories such as breakfast, lunch, seeing a movie, but it was much leaner for the related superordinate events as meal, entertainment and subordinate such as quick breakfast, birthday party did not have more significant attributes than the basic level category. therefore the object, actions and events on the basic level category occupy an important position in the cognitive process of human beings. with regard to the basic level category, it has many characteristics: first, it has the most important distinctions. the basic level is the level where we perceive the most differences between objects, actions, and events in the world. second, it is configuration of features. it is also in the basic level that the largest number of common features of the members of a category is to be found. so its at this level you find the idealized configuration of feature of a category. third, basic level categories are also the most economical ones, in that its here that you find the most relevant information. last, it has the gestalt characteristic. the information on interactions with objects in the real world is stored at this level, which means that its at this level we conjure up the general gestalt of the category. generally speaking, the research on the basic level category has identified that most of the cognitive activities of human being is based on the basic level category, and the 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 14 research on the basic level category also can provide theoretical foundation for explaining and understanding the meaning underlying the linguistic structures. english middle construction is a specific construction with surprisingly high frequency (keyser perfective and imperfective; durative and non- durative; progressive and non-progressive. and a thorough classification 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 19 of english verb classes and alternations was given by vendler and dowty. according to vendler (1967) and dowty (1979), verbs can be divided into four different aspectual classes on the basis of their relation to a time scale. the four aspectual classes of verbs are: states, activities, accomplishments and achievements: 21) a. the boy knew the answer. (state) b. the boy cried. (activity) c. alice killed the rabbit .(accomplishment) d. harry received a letter. (achievement) state verb denotes non- dynamic states of affairs that do not have an internal temporal structure. the action denoted by an activity verb holds for unspecified number of stages on the time scale but does not include a specific endpoint. the action denoted by an accomplishment verb includes an endpoint as well as the stages leading up to it. finally the action denoted by an achievement verb is instantaneous. (mudler, 1992). this classification has been widely applied in the analysis of verbs and it is natural that many linguists discussed the aspectual properties of middle verbs according to it. roberts1987 has once pointed out a method to distinguish the accomplishment and other types of verbs. if a verb has an internal argument, which undergoes a change of state, then it is an accomplishment or otherwise it is achievement, activity or state. for example, verbs as build, cook, and paint must undergo a change of state, but other types of verbs do no