Introduction
1. Objectives of the Study
Linguists have studied the COC from generative, cognitive and constructiongrammar aspects. They define the COC and describe its syntactic and cognitivecharacters. Although they have gained a lot of achievements, there are also somequestions unresolved.Firstly, they have not paid sufficient attention to the modifier before the cognateobject. What are the pragmatic and cognitive mechanisms that contribute to itsexistence? The thesis aims to have a tentative research on the phenomenon frompragmatic and cognitive perspectives.Secondly, few of them have explained the transitive use of intransitive verbsfrom the construction grammar perspective. We have limited ideas of the mechanismsbehind this kind of phenomenon. The thesis addresses the problem within theframework of the construction grammar.Thirdly, the thesis compares the V-yi-V construction in Chinese with the COC inEnglish. There is no COC in Chinese, while the V-yi-V construction in Chinese sharessome similarities with the COC. We will list their differences in lexical, syntactic, andsemantic aspects.
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2. Significance of the Study
The study of COC from the pragmatic and cognitive perspectives can complement thestudy of COC. The thesis provides an explanation for the transitive use of intransitiveverbs in the construction from the construction grammar perspective. Besides, thethesis also distinguishes the Chinese V-yi-V construction from COC in English. Thesefindings are helpful for foreigners to learn Chinese.
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3. Organization of the Study
This thesis is composed of seven parts.The first part is the Introduction, which focuses on the objectives, thesignificance and the organization of the study.The second part is Literature Review. In this part, we summarize the researcheson COC from the generative, cognitive and construction grammar perspectives.The third part is dedicated to the accounting for the existence of modifier inCOC under the information structure and information focus.The fourth part is the construal theory accounting for the existence cause of thepre-modifier.The fifth part is the analysis of the transitive use of intransitive verb from theconstruction grammar perspective. We present ten properties of high transitivity andmeasure the transitivity of the COC. We draw the conclusion that the transitive COCshares meaning with the unergative verb. The construction coerces the intransitiveverb to carry an object, and it has nothing to do with the transitivity property of theverb.
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Chapter 1 Literature Review
1.1. Previous studies on the definition of COC
According to Qu Chunfang (屈春芳, 2005), the term cognate object construction(COC for short) first came into appearance in the 19th century and it exists in manylanguages, such as Latin, Arabic, English, German, Hebrew, Russian and Icelandic.Since its first appearance, it has been defined by many scholars.The Oxford English Dictionary or OED for short (OED III: 445) definescognateobject as "accusative: an object of kindred sense or derivation; that which mayadverbially follow an intransitive verb, as in ‘to die the death’". From the definitionand the example we can see that the verb and noun are morphologically related; thenoun has adverbial status and plays the role of an adjunct; the verb must beintransitive; the noun is definite.Webster Third New International Dictionary defines the cognate object as"substantive related usually in derivation but sometimes only in meaning to the verbof which it is the object as song in she sang a song, race in he ran the race". It can becalled cognate object as well as cognate accusative. As can be observed from thedefinition and the examples that head noun of cognate object should be semanticallyor morphologically related to the verb and the noun can be definite and indefinite.
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1.2. Previous studies on the types of cognate verbs and cognateobject construction
According to Liang Wei (梁薇, 2007) which is based on Rice's (1988) and ZhangQuan's (张权, 2000) viewpoints, cognate verbs can be classified into four types:“Verbs of facial activity and expression (laugh, smile, sigh, wink, grin, sneeze, titter);Verbs of bodily secretion (bleed, sweat, spit, piss); Verbs of performance (dance,waltz, sing); Other Verbs (live, die, dream, sleep, walk, hiccup, hum, run, shout, fight,donate, breathe, bow, shoot, tell, bum)”. All of the words are intransitive.As regard to Perlmutter's (1978) classification, intransitive verbs can be dividedinto unergative and unaccusative. He defines unergative verbs as intransitive verbsthat take agents or experiencers as their subjects, such as walk, work, talk, swim.Unergative verbs represent volitional acts of their subject referents and those thatrepresent involuntary bodily processes of humans. While unaccusative verbs takenon-agents as their subjects and represent nonvolitional events of the non-agents, suchas open, break, roll, stop, happen, exist. Iwasaki (2007) defines unergative verbs as“those which describe a participant as both a source and simultaneously an energysink, and unaccusative verbs as those whose participant do not exert energy butchange their states”. Liu Aiying (刘爱英, 2012) points out that verbs like jump, run,laugh, and sleep are unergative verbs, the only argument of which is an externalargument and is in the logical-subject position. Verbs like break, appear, exist areunaccusative verbs, it takes an internal argument and is in the logical-object position.Massam (1990), Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995) and Macfarland (1995) haveproposed a restriction:
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Chapter 3 Construal Theory (CT) and COC...... 24
3.1 CT and Construal Operation Classifications.......24
3.2 Cognate Object Modifier and Profiling........25
3.3 Cognate Object Modifier and Trajector/Landmark ........28
3.4 Cognate Object Modifier and Mental Scanning.........30
3.5 Summary........32
Chapter 4 Construction Grammar and COC..... 34
4.1 Transitivity of English Clauses and COC ......34
4.2 Constructional Meaning of COC and the Transitive Use ..........36
4.3 Summary........39
5.1 Lexical perspective.....40
5.2 Syntactic perspective .........41
5.3 Semantic perspective.........42
5.4 Summary........44
Chapter 5 Comparative Study of the COC in English andthe V-yi-V construction in Chinese
He Shanfen (何善芬, 2007) stresses that Chinese words are not formed by roots,so it is not possible for there being cognate nouns of verbs. Therefore, there is noCOC in Chinese. However, many other Chinese linguists , like Wan Weiye (万伟业,2012), hold the opinion that in Chinese there is a kind of construction: V+yi+V, likeKan+yi+kan (have a look)，is a Chinese corresponding construction of the COC inEnglish. In my opinion, although they share a similar construction, they cannot beviewed as COC. The two constructions have more differences than similarities.V-yi-V construction in Chinese is one form of the verb reduplications. Broadlyspeaking, the verb reduplication in Chinese contains four basic forms: V-V, V-yi-V，V-le-V，V-le-yi-V. This classification is acknowledged by many Chinese linguists,such as Fan Fanglian (范芳莲, 1964), Mao Xiuping (毛修平, 1985). They havestudies on the phenomenon of Chinese verb reduplication from different angles, suchas the syntactic perspective, semantic perspective and so on. Therefore, the thesis willexamine the properties of V-yi-V construction from these perspectives and thencompare it with the COC in English.
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Conclusion
Despite many of the studies already carried out on COC in English, this paperseeks to provide tentative answers to some of the remaining unsolved issuesconcerning COC, trying to gain insights into the pragmatic and cognitive properties ofthe construction.Firstly, based on previous researches, we characterize COC as being aconstruction containing a typical intransitive verb taking an object that ismorphologically and semantically cognate with the predicate verb. The cognate objectnoun canonically takes a modifier, and the intransitive verb allowed to enter theconstruction is mostly of the unergative type (as opposed to the unaccusative type),characterized by such semantic features as [+dynamic], [+durative] and [－telic].Secondly, we approach the underlying reason for the preferred existence of amodifier from a pragmatic perspective. Based on taxonomy of information structureand a classification of information focus, we make a detailed analysis of COC interms of its focus structure. We argue that the locus for the natural focus in COC is themodifier of the CO, and that is why the modifying element is somewhat indispensible.The entire predicate of COC becomes the information focus via projection of thenatural focus, i.e. the modifier of the CO. This is different from the situation in the“predicate verb + adverbial” construction propositionally identical to COC, where thenatural focus falls either on the predicate or the adverbial, depending on the context.
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Reference (omitted)