（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）英汉中动结构的认知语义分析.pdf

重庆大学硕士学位论文 中文摘要 i 摘 要 传统上认为中动结构是处于主动和被动之间的语言结构，是用主动形式表示 被动意义。英语中动结构因涉及复杂的句法、语义和词汇关系，一直是语言学界 研究讨论的热点。对于这种特殊的语法、语义现象的阐释，传统的语言学主要是 围绕中动结构的结构特点、生成机制和中动词的特点、选择限制四方面展开。中 动结构在汉语中也存在，并且出现频率很高，是汉语一种重要的语言现象。本文 分别对英语和汉语中存在的中动结构作了考察分析，并对二者进行了一定的比较。 结构（construction）是一种意义-形式对（goldberg, 1995: 4） ，而中动结构也 不例外。本文在概括了原型中动结构（nva）的句法、语义和语用特征之后，从 构式语法（construction grammar）的角度讨论了中动结构的句子结构（句法）和 论元结构（语义）特征以及二者的关系。研究发现，中动结构并非处于主动与被 动之间的结构，而是独立于主被动的一种描述性结构。正是由于它的非事件性 （non-eventive）特征，动词的时态和语态都受到了限制。也因为中动结构的描述 性语义特点，中动词并不是结构意义的中心，其意义的中心在于动词后面的修饰 语。由于动词作谓语的常规性要求，英语中动词在结构上的份量大于汉语，汉语 中动结构中的动词在功能实质上与状语相当，谓语的资格由其后的修饰成分担当。 这一点是汉语中动和英语中动的基本差异，也是若干结构和意义差异的根源。研 究还发现中动结构的特点是口语性强，且具有描述修饰的功能，这是中动结构最 大的语用特征。 关键词：结构，中动结构，中动动词，认知框架 重庆大学硕士学位论文 abstract ii abstract middle construction is traditionally thought of as a construction between active and passive, and as an expression of passive meaning with the active form. english middle construction, which involves a complex interplay 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 level. it mainly centers on two topics: the derivation of english middle construction and the aspectual properties of the verb. it seems that the traditional method cannot provide a sound explanation to the derivation of english middle construction and the special characteristics of middle verbs. middle construction, as a very important phenomenon, also exists in chinese. this dissertation gives a comparative study about middle construction in chinese and english. construction is a form-meaning pair (goldberg, 1995: 4), and middle construction is not exceptional. the prototypical middle construction has the “n+v+a” construction, which has its sentential and argument structure. chapter three studies the syntactical features and semantic features of english middle construction, and deals with the correlation of the features at the two levels. the present study shows that middle construction is not a middle state of active construction and passive construction, but it is a special descriptive construction. being non-eventive, tense and aspect are not proper for middle verbs. the aim of a middle sentence is to describe an object, not to state an event, so the middle verb is not the center of the syntactic structure and meaning. the semantic center is transferred to the modification after the verb. as a strict subject-predicate language, there is a tradition that the predicates must be verbs or phrasal verbs. therefore, the structural importance of middle verbs in english is greater than that in chinese, which is actually fallen to be the adverb and its predicate function is shifted to the modifier after it. this is the basic difference between chinese middle construction and english middle construction, and it is also the cause of the several syntactic and semantic differences, which are presented in chapter four. keywords: construction; middle construction; middle verb; cognitive framework 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter one introduction 1 chapter one introduction 1.1 orientations and motivation of the study this dissertation is intended for a cognitive study on middle construction in chinese and english, which is based on the discussion of the conceptual meaning of middle construction. middle construction was first noticed, distinguished and defined by american linguists (fagan, 1988; keyser stroik, 1992, 1995, 1999). they have presented some frameworks to explain the formation of middle construction, and have made valuable contributions to the structure analysis. however, as a common phenomenon in both chinese and english, middle construction can be approached by analyzing the semantic structure embodied in the syntactic structure, from the cognitive perspective. cognitive linguistics is the set of some novel perspective (experiential view, prominence view and attentional view, cf. ungerer it is not passive either, for the verb sell appears in an active form, rather than in a passive form. therefore, the name of middle construction perfectly matches the reality: it is indeed in the “middle” of active construction and passive construction. this active-middle-passive system is different from hallidays voice types (1994: 169), for the classification is not based on the order of information, but based on the relation between subject and predicate. the relation is semantic, and it represents the reality, so active construction is often used to express the action of an event, and passive construction is always intended to state the result of an event. while middle construction, different from active and passive, does not express event, but shows the static characteristics of the subject. example (1) means that the woman writers books are always best-selling. this is only the description about a certain feature of the subject. therefore, middle construction can be defined temporarily as the following: middle construction describes the property of the subject, with a noun, a verb and an adverb as its elements, and the semantic feature of the adverb transfers from the verb to the noun. 1.3 aims and hypotheses of the study as was discussed above, these questions are supposed to be answered: a. what is the nature of middle construction? b. how is the syntactic structure formed? c. what is the relation between concept and structure? d. what are the similarities and differences between english and chinese middle construction? e. what caused the difference between english middle construction and chinese construction? in order to achieve the above goals, based on the previous discussion, the following hypotheses are set out to test: a. middle construction describes the property of the noun. there lies an invisible event inside its conceptual meaning. b. the formation of middle construction is driven by meaning. c. the differences between middle construction in english and chinese are caused by the basic structural distinction. english is a subject-predicate language, while chinese is not. 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter one introduction 3 1.4 layout and scope of the study the dissertation is arranged as follows: chapter one offers a brief introduction to the orientation and the motivations of the study, the concept of middle construction, aims, hypotheses, layout and the scope of the present study. chapter two is the literature review, which is divided into two parts. the first part presents a brief review of the researches on middle construction. the second part is the theoretical background of the whole thesis, which discusses some ideas about construction grammar, some concepts of which are applied in the discussion. chapter three is devoted to english middle construction. the study involves the classification of middle construction in english, its syntactic and semantic features, the relation of middle verbs and middle construction, its formation and the selectional restrictions. chapter four makes a general study about chinese middle construction, pointing the particularity of chinese middle construction. chapter five provides the conclusions of the whole dissertation. it presents the main findings of the study, the limitations, as well as the suggestions for further research. 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter two literature review 4 chapter two literature review 2.1 middle construction middle construction has received much attention in the literature of numerous linguists with quite different academic background. it has been called activo-passives (jespersen, 1928: 347), medio-passives (declerk, 1991:203), process-oriented passives (halliday, 1967), facility-oriented passives (fawcett, 1980: 148), patient-subject constructions (van oosten, 1997, 1986) and pseudo-intransitives (lyons, 1969: 366; smith, 1978: 103), just to name a few. however, the most influential studies are made in generative framework, and have been inspired by keyser 2. how is middle construction formed, is the formation a syntactic operation or a lexical process; 3. why are some verbs eligible for middle formation, whereas others are not? what constraints is middle formation subject to? the following is an introduction to the three respects from generative perspective. 2.1.1 the features of middle construction 2.1.1.1 the syntactic features of middle construction middle construction often requires some types of adjuncts, such as adverbs or adverbial phrases, etc. if not, the construction is not acceptable grammatically (jackendoff, 1972), for example, (2) a. *the car drives b. the car drives like a boat, easily. c. the car drives quickly. in the above example, the presence of a modifying element, such as a manner adverb quickly or adverb modifier like a boat is needed for the acceptability of english middle construction. additionally english middle construction is generic and non-eventive. it cannot 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter two literature review 5 describe a specific event occurring in some specific time (keyser 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. 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 cannot 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 is something about the glasss specific property, so he used middle construction to describe the easily broken glass. 2.1.2 the formation of middle construction there is much debate on the formation of middle construction. theorists such as keyser and roeper (1984), carrier and randall (1992), stroik (1992, 1995), hoestra therefore it may not need to be structurally discharged. without any np-movement involved, the middle construction only has the internal argument realized as subject. questioning keyser both approaches acknowledged that there must be a way to combine structures to create novel utterances, and both approaches recognize that an important theory of language learning is needed. however, construction approached contrast sharply with the mainstream generative grammar. goldberg (2003) lists the basic tenets shared by most constructionist approached as follows: tenet 1. all levels of description are understood to involve pairings of form with semantic or discourse function, including morphemes or words, idioms, partially lexically filled and fully abstract phrasal patterns. tenet 2. an emphasis is placed on subtle aspects of the way we conceive of events and states of affairs. tenet 3. a “what you see is what you get” approach to syntactic form is adopted: no underlying levels of syntax, or any phonological empty elements are posited. tenet 4. constructions are understood to be learned on the basis of the input and general cognitive mechanism (they are constructed), and are expected to vary crossing linguistically. tenet 5. cross-linguistic generalizations are explained by appealing to general cognitive constraints together with the functions of the construction involved. tenet 6. language-specific generalizations across constructions are captured via inheritance networks much like those that have long been posited to capture our non-linguistic knowledge. tenet 7. the totality of out knowledge of language is captured by a network of constructions: a “construct-i-con.” unlike mainstream generative grammar, which hold that the nature of language can best be revealed by studying formal structures independently of their semantic or discourse functions, the constructionist approaches emphasizes the semantics and distribution of particular words, grammatical morphemes, and cross-linguistically unusual phrasal patterns which are related to humans cognition. from the above discussion, we can also interpret construction grammar as the grammar which studied form-meaning pairings from the perspective of cognition. for instance, the english 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter two literature review 14 ditransitive construction, its central sense is associated with a highly specific semantic structure, that of successful transfer between a volitional agent and a willing recipient (goldberg, 1995: 151). each syntactic construction pairs contain formal properties with certain communicative function. that is to say, meaning, associated with particular clause pattern, must be accounted for by any framework, regardless of where it is encoded or what ones assumptions about the syntax are. bolinger has argued: “a difference in syntactic form always spells a difference in meaning” (cf. goldberg, 1995: 3). that is, in addition to semantic generalization there also exist generalizations about information structure properties of the construction, or the way in which a speakers assumptions about the hearers state of knowledge and consciousness at the time of speaking is reflected in syntactic form. argument structure constructions are a special subclass of constructions that provides the basic means of clausal expression in a language. according to construction grammar, it is not necessary that every syntactic form is uniquely associated with a particular semantics; there are cases of constructional ambiguity, where the same form is paired with distinct meanings. (ibid: 229). systematic differences in meaning between a verb in different constructions are attributed directly to the particular constructions. that is, the main verb can be understood to combine with an argument structure construction. the main verb plays important role in the forming of syntactic constructions. two constructions in different languages can be identified as instances of the same type of construction if and only if they serve a closely related function and form. by this point, construction grammar is a good theory for contrastive analysis about english and chinese. as discussed above, the form and general interpretation of basic sentence patterns of a language are determined by semantic and/ or syntactic information specified by the main verb. so before we discuss the integration of verb and constructions, two terms must be discussed: the nature of verb meaning and the nature of constructional meaning. 2.2.3 the nature of verb meaning although constructionists argue that constructions have meaning independently of verbs, it is clearly not the case that the grammar works entirely top-down, with constructions simply imposing their meaning on unsuspecting verbs. as a matter of fact, there are reasons to think that the analysis must be both top-down and bottom-up. that is, the meaning of construction and verbs interact in nontrivial ways, and therefore some 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter two literature review 15 cross-reference verbs and argument structures will be necessary (ibid: 24). consequently, the meaning of verb plays an important role in the meaning of construction. constructionists (ibid: 25) argue that “meanings are typically defined relative to some particular background frame or scene, which itself may be highly structured.” verbs also involve frame-semantic meanings. their designation must include reference to background frame rich with world and culture knowledge (ibid: 27). according to constructionist grammar, the nature of verb meaning includes the following aspects. first, verb meaning requires aspects of complex world knowledge. they must be able to refer to conceptual structure, broadly construed. second, syntactically verb meaning can be interpreted by using semantic decompositional structures, such as “x causes y to recerive z” or “x acts”, etc. in other words, the “syntactically relevant aspects of verb meaning” follows from the existence of constructions, which are independently motivated. third, interpreting the frame-semantic knowledge should be associated with lexical entries. finally, it is obvious that general frame-semantic knowledge is required to account for correct inferences. to summarize, rich frame-semantic knowledge associated with verbs is necessary for felicitous use of adverbs and adjuncts and contributes to the interpretation of the verbs and helps to make correct inference. 2.2.4 the nature of construction meaning constructionists argue that the nature of constructional meaning relate to two aspects: one is polysemy; the other is humanly relevant scene. as is discussed above, constructions are typically associated with a family of closely related senses rather than a single, fixed abstract sense. given the fact that no strict division between syntax and the lexicon is assumed, this polysemy is expected (ibid: 31), since morphological polysemy has been shown to be the norm in study. goldberg (ibid: 32) also mentions, “since constructions are treated as the same basic data type as morphemes, that they should have polysemous senses like morphemes is expected”. constructional polysemy refers to the same form paired with different but related senses. for example, many ditransitive expressions do not strictly imply that the patient argument is successfully transferred to the potential recipient which is the basic sense of the construction with expressions involving different types of verbs. by accounting for these differences in terms of constructional, as opposed to positing a 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter two literature review 16 collection of lexical rules, for example, we can capture the relations between the different senses in a natural way. in particular, a polysemous analysis allows us to recognize the special status of