Chapter OneIntroduction

1.1 Rationale of the Research

English light verbs usually have corresponding full verbs which have the same orsimilar meaning with them. In Jespersen's opinion, the major benefit to use light verbconstructions is that we can use modifier to reflect some "descriptive characteristics"expediently，e.g.，have a delightful bathe, have a good cry. etc. (Jespersen, 1940:117). Aswe shall see below, LVCs show both syntactic and semantic idiosyncrasies comparedwith normal transitive constructions. The structure of LVCs has been intensively studiedin terms of general linguistic categories within the framework of generative grammar(e.g. Cattel, 1984), but the semantic study is largely satisfied with the description offacts, without explaining systematically why these constructions mean what they are.This paper will try to explain the syntactic and semantic idiosyncrasies of light verb constructions within the framework of construction grammar and the characteristics oflight verb constructions from the perspective of cognitive linguistics.

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1.2 Purpose and Significance

The present paper attempts to conduct a research on English light verb, whichdraws upon the theory of construction grammar, with an aim to explore the underlyingprinciple of LVCs. Otherwise, this article focuses on the analysis of the situation type oflight verb constructions, and points out the difference with full verb constructions(hereafter “FVCs”）in this aspect of meaning. We hope the present thesis will providesome insights into the study of LVCs, and some practical implications for Englishteaching and learning in China. This paper consists of five chapters, and the structure of this paper is as follows:Chapter One gives a brief introduction of the whole paper and the backgroundinformation of this research, including the main research questions and the significanceof this paper.Chapter Two mainly focuses on some previous studies and gives a brief historicalreview of the studies on light verbs, light verb constructions and construction grammar.Chapter Three presents the study on the structure of light verb constructions, andthe author divides the constructions into two subtypes according to the differentcharacteristics and makes a comparative study between LVCs and FVCs in syntax.Chapter Four we will make a research into LVCs by using the metonymy theoryand the coercion theory of cognitive linguistics and try to find out the coercionmechanism in LVCs and finally work out that during the process which the head verb inthe LVC turns to the head noun by dispersing its lexical meaning to each part of theLVC which makes a LVC becomes the predicate in one sentence.

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Chapter TwoLiterature Review

2.1 Previous Studies on Light Verbs and LVCs

Light verbs and LVCs have been well-studied in linguistics since early days.Jespersen(1965) is generally credited with first coining the term of light verb forEnglish V+NP constructions such as have a rest、give a shout. Chomsky (1995) firstputs forward the syntactic category of light verb v as the assigner of the external 0-roles in his Minimalist Program. However, even within generative linguists, there has beendispute over the terminology and methods of study (Wen Binli & Cheng Jie，2007).Horvath & Siloni (2002) gives the various versions of light verb studies a cover term“the little-v hypothesis”. Since we are interested in light verbs and light verbconstructions in Jespersen's sense, we will not go through the various versions，but onlygive the definition and illustration provided by Radford (1997):Light verb: An affixal verb (often with a causative sense like that of make) towhich a noun, adjective or verb adjoins. For example，it might be claimed that the suffix+en in a verb like sadden is an affixal verb which can combine with an adjective likesad to form the causative verb sadden (meaning 'make sad\ 'cause to become sad').This type of analysis could be extended to verbs like roll as they are used in sentenceslike He rolled the ball down the hill, where we could suggest that roll is usedcausatively (in the sense of'make roW or ‘cause to rolV), and hence involves adjunctionof the verb roll to an abstract light (i.e. to a null verbal counterpart of +en).

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2.2 Previous Studies on Construction Grammar

Though “construction” is a term adopted from traditional grammar, it has gainednew significance here. In this section, we will have a brief survey of the developmentand essential principles of construction grammar, ignoring the technical details ofvarious versions of it. But first of all, we will give a glance to the model of grammaticalrepresentation against which construction grammarians have reacted, namely, thecomponential model found in TG Grammar. In TG Grammar, the grammar is divided into three separate components ormodules, namely, the phonological, the syntactic, and the semantic. Each componentstudies each specific type of linguistic information contained in a sentence: sound，syntax, and meaning respectively. In addition, each component consists of atomicelements and rules that combine these elements into complex structures. Of the three7 components, the syntactic component serves as the core of grammar, bridging the gapbetween sound and meaning, and can be studied without reference to either the physicalsound or abstract meaning, a principle known as “the autonomy of syntax" (Lyons, 1981:235). The only constructs that contain information of all the three components are wordsin the lexicon, something regarded as periphery and accidental in grammar. It is throughthe lexicon and the “linking rules,，(Croft& Cruse, 2004: 227) that the otherwiseseparate components are related: ‘the properties of lexical entries project onto thesyntax' (Cook & Newson, 2000: 19) through Projection Principle; 'S-Structure bridgesthe sounds and meanings' (ibid: 152); 0-Criterion ‘links semantic participant roles in thelexical semantic representations of verbs to syntactic argument positions in syntacticstructure' (Croft, 2007: 465).

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Chapter Three Analysis of English Light Verb Constructions......... 22

3.1 Typical Structure of English LVCs .........22

3.2 Syntactic Structure of English LVCs .........26

3.3 Summary .........29

Chapter Four Analysis of LVCs From the Perspective of Construction Coercion......... 30

4.1 Metonymy Motivated Nominalization in LVCs .........30

4.1.1 Classification of Metonymy Motivated Nominalization......... 30

4.1.2 Metonymy Motivated Nominalization of LVCs......... 32

4.1.3 A comparative study on LVCs and FVCs .........33

4.2 Coercion Mechanism in LVCs .........  34

4.2.1 Metonymy in LVCs .........35

4.2.2 Construction Coercion......... 36

4.3 Summary 37Chapter Five Conclusion......... 38

5.1 Major Findings of the Study .........38

5.2 Implications of the Study......... 39

5.3 Limitations of the Study......... 39

5.4 Prospects for Further Research .........40

Chapter FourAnalysis of LVCs from the Perspective ofConstruction Coercion

4.1 Metonymy Motivated Nominalization in LVCs

It is universally acknowledged that deverbal nouns are nouns that are derived fromverbs or verb phrases, but that behave grammatically as nouns, not as verbs. They aredistinct from deverbal noun types such as gerunds and infinitives, which behave likeverbs within their phrase (although that verb phrase is then used as a noun phrase withinthe larger sentence). The formation of deverbal nouns is one of the types ofnominalization (noun formation). Examples of deverbal nouns in English includeorganization (derived from the verb organize), the noun construct /DkonstJAkt/ (fromthe verb construct /ksnOsUAkt/)，and discovery (from the verb discover). The -ing formof any verb can serve as a deverbal noun, although the same word form can also be usedverbally as a gerund or participle. Since we have discussed about the typical LVCs inchapter 3 and we found that the DNl is a typical kind of DN in LVCs，thus, our researchwill concerned about the DNl.

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Conclusion

This study adopts cognitive construction grammar to examine the position of LVCsin English. The foregoing chapters mainly examine the relations between light verbsand LVCs. Furthermore, On the basis of the principles of construction grammar, wehave investigated both the structural and the semantic facets of English LVCs whilefocusing our attention on the coercion of LVCs, and we may draw some conclusions asfollows, which may serve as answers to the research questions. LVCs are both syntactically and semantically idiosyncratic compared withcorresponding FVCs. Chapter 3 is devoted to the structural facet, in which we divideLVs into LV1 and LV2. also, we divide DNs to DN1 and DN2 and come up with LVC1and LVC2. We have found that both the features of the constituents and the syntacticproperties of LVC1 differ from LVC2 considerably. The former is more different fromFVCs than the latter, so it may be reasonable to assert that members of LVC1 are themore central members of LVCs while members of LVC2 are marginal, showingcharacteristics of both LVCs and FVCs.

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