Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 The Concept of the English Caused-Motion Construction
According to Goldberg (1995), construction is defined as a form-meaningcorrespondence that exists independently of particular verbs. Meanwhile Goldberg(1995) also points out that constructions are regarded as the basic units of language.The English caused-motion construction, as a particular construction, can berepresented as NP1/V/NP2/PP syntactically, in which NP1 stands for a causerargument, V means a non-stative verb, NP2 refers to a theme and PP is in the name of adirectional phrase.Semantically, the basic sense of the caused-motion construction is that the causerargument causes directly the theme argument to move along the path assigned by thedirectional phrase, namely, “X causes Y to move Z” (Goldberg: 1995:152) . Thisconcept can be expressed in the following examples: Goldberg (1995:162) holds that sense A can be considered as the central sense ofthe construction, which involves direct causation and actual movement. The othersenses are the extensions of the central sense. Goldberg defines this phenomenon as“constructional polysemy”, that is, the same form is paired with various but relatedmeanings..
………………
1.2 The Purpose of the thesis
Goldberg (1995) points out that there are various but related senses of the Englishcaused-motion construction. She proposes that sense A “X CAUSES Y to MOVE Z” isthe central sense of the caused-motion construction and the other four senses are theextensions from it. This thesis will, on the basis of the construction grammar and somecognitive theories, analyze the motivation and extension of the polysemy of the Englishcaused-motion construction. This thesis focuses on the English caused-motion construction, which is a kind ofthe resultative constructions. As an important language phenomenon, the Englishresultative construction has become a major focus of research on the syntax-semanticsinterface. Linguists have adopted different approaches to the study of this specificconstruction. Goldberg and Jackendoff (2017) hold that there is a family resemblanceamong various English resultative constructions. They classify the English resultativesinto four kinds: the causative property resultative (e.g. Tom watered the plants flat); thenoncausative property resultative (e.g. The pool froze solid), the noncausative pathresultative (e.g. The basketball rolled up the hill) and the causative path resultative (e.g.Till rolled the football down the hill). This thesis will focus on the causative pathresultative, which is also called the English caused-motion construction.
…………
Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Talmy’s Study
Talmy (2017, Vol II: 25) “treats a situation containing motion and the continuationof a stationary location alike as a motion event”. According to Talmy, a basic motionevent consists of one object, namely the figure, moving or located with respect toanother object that is the Reference object or ground. It has been analyzed that a motionevent has four components: path, motion, figure and ground, which are identified asfollowing by Talmy:Path: refers to the path followed or site occupied by the figure object with respectto the ground object.Motion: refers to the presence per se of motion or located-ness i，英语论文范文，英语论文范文
|
