Chapter 1 Introduction
1.4 Organization of the Thesis
This study is organized as follows. Chapter one is the general introduction of this study with the background knowledge of the issue. Chapter two reviews previous works on caused-motion events and the corresponded English verbs bring and carry.
Chapter three introduces the database, theoretical frameworks and the applied methodology. Chapter four presents the findings of data that motivate this study.
Section five proposes semantic-to-syntactic accounts for the various meanings of dài 帶 ‘bring’ and also their semantic interrelations. Chapter six concludes the study noting the significance of this thesis and related issues for future studies.
Chapter 2 Literature Review
Motion event has been a widely discussed issue concerned by linguists for recent decades. Caused motion, as the causative counterpart of self-initiated motion events is thus another important issue of discussion under such a concern. Mandarin verb dài 帶
‘bring’, which literally corresponds to the English verb bring or carry, can be described as a ‘verb of continuous causation of accompanied motion in a deictically-specified direction’ (Gropen et al 1989). However, contrary to English bring, the meaning and uses of dài 帶 ‘bring’ are beyond the semantic domain of caused-motion. In this section, the traditional notions of caused-motion events and previous studies on the English verbs bring and carry will be reviewed. Section 2.1 reviews the previous works on caused-motion events in both English and Mandarin and Section 2.2 introduces two different approaches in viewing English verbs bring and carry.
2.1 Previous Works on Caused-motion Events 2.1.1 The Lexicalization Patterns of Motion
Talmy (2000) proposes a cognitive semantics account on the lexicalization patterns of motion events. It suggests that a motion event contains four internal components: Figure, Move, Path, and Ground, in which the Figure is a movable object;
the Ground is a reference object or frame; the Path is what followed or site occupied by the Figure object with respect to the Ground object; and the Move refers to the occurrence of translational motion. Thus, a typical motion event is depicted as ‘an object (the Figure), under a motional act (Move), moving or located with respect to a location (the Ground) following a path or site at issue.’ (Talmy 2000: 25) In addition, he also points out that motion events can be associated with two external co-event
components: Manner and Cause, as illustrated in (4) below:
(4) a. The pencil rolled off the table.
[Move+Manner]
b. I pushed the keg into the storeroom.
[Move+Cause] (Talmy 2000, vol. II: 26, 4)
In (4a), the verb rolled expresses how the pencil moves and so expressed as Manner, whereas pushed in (4b) specifies an external force of I that causes the keg to move and so describes the cause of the event. In other words, Manner and Cause can conflate with Move encoded in the motion verb so as to describe the way of the occurrence of motion.
Talmy (2000) further identifies the constructions underlying the co-event conflation in order to account for the relations that the co-event bears to the main Motion event. The patterns are indicated by the forms WITH-THE-MANNER-OF and WITH-THE-CAUSE-OF that function semantically like the subordinating preposition or conjunction of a complex sentence (Talmy 2000: 29). Therefore, the unconflated paraphrases of the English motion expressions for (4) can be further illustrated as below:
(5) a. The rock rolled down the hill
=[The rock MOVED down the hill] WITH-THE-MANNER-OF [the rock rolled]
b. I kicked the keg into the storeroom
=[I AMOVED3 the keg into the storeroom] WITH-THE-CAUSE-OF [I kicked the keg].
(Talmy 2000 vol. II: 30)
Under the lexicalization patterns and the co-event conflations, it has revealed by Talmy (2000) that the translational motion event can usually be divided into two types:
self-intiated motion event and caused-motion event.
2.1.2 The Prototypical Caused-motion Event
Concerned with the notion of caused-motion, Li (2007) identifies and defines the conceptual prototype of a caused-motion event from the cognitive-based approach and Prototype Theory. According to Li (2007), the basic concept of the caused-motion event involves two causally-related entities or subevents, in which one entity causes the other to undergo a certain change of location. Thus, it is postulated that the typical caused-motion event involves with two required events: causing event and motion event, as represented below:
(6) Typical Caused-motion Event
Causer Causing Action Theme Motion Causing event Motion event
(Li 2007: 23)
As to the internal elements conceptualized in the caused-motion event, it is
3 The subscript “A” is placed before a verb to indicate that a verb is agentive. (AMOVED= CAUSE to MOVE) (Talmy 2000)
suggested that the on-going event as a whole is perceived as consisting of five internal components: Causer, Theme, Driving Force, Motion, and Path, which come together form a gestalt of the conceptual structure of caused motion with the meaning: ‘the Causer causes the Theme to move along a Path.’ Thus, the schematic representation of a typical caused-motion concept can be represented as below:
(7) Typical Caused-motion concept
Causer Driving Force Theme Motion Path
(Li 2007: 24)
In such a conceptual structure, the Causer is the source of the Driving force; the Theme is the energy goal entity who undergoes a change of location resulted by the impact of the Driving force exerted by the Causer; and the Driving force is the transmitted energy exerted by the Causer onto the Theme. Based on the above concepts, Li thus defines the prototypical caused-motion event as consisting of a human Causer volitionally exerts physical force acting upon a physical theme that immediately causes the theme to move along a Path to a physical space.
Incorporating the accounts of motion events proposed by Talmy (2000) and Li (2007), we can categorize dài 帶 ‘bring’ as a caused-motion verb for two reasons. For one, dài 帶 ‘bring’ is a verb that lexicalizes the co-event component Cause requiring an agentive causer. For the other, the event denoted by dài 帶 ‘bring’ usually requires two subevents: a causing event and a motion event. Take (8) as an example:
(8) 我 帶 錢 到 學 校 Causing event + Motion event
Motion+Cause
wǒ dài qián dào xuéxiào I bring money arrive school
‘I brought the money to school.’
But it should be noted that in the motion event of dài 帶 ‘bring’, there involves the concurrent movement of Agent and Theme, which can be ascribed to the inherent lexical meaning of dài 帶 ‘bring’, which will be discussed in detail in Chapter 5. Thus in (8), the Agent 我 ‘I’ and the Theme 錢 ‘money’ both undergo the movement.
2.1.3 Constructional Analysis of Caused Motion
In addition to the lexical and cognitive approaches to caused motion, there are constructional-based accounts for caused motion event encoded in English and Chinese.
Under the framework of Construction Grammar, Goldberg (1995) defines English caused motion as structurally following the pattern: [SUB [V OBJ OBL] and such a form is associated with the meaning ‘X CAUSES Y TO MOVE Z’; that is, the causer argument directly causes the theme argument to move along a path designated by the directional phrase. The form-meaning correspondence can be represented by the following figure:
Figure 1. English Caused-motion Construction
With the mapping of the syntactic form and the constructional meaning, it is postulated that any lexical verb will be associated with the sense of caused motion under this construction whether or not it encodes the sense of motion. For instance, the verb sneeze in ‘the napkin is sneezed off the table.’
As for Mandarin Chinese, Pan and Chang (2005) make a comparison of English and Chinese caused-motion constructions and conclude with some characteristics for the Chinese case. It has pointed out that Chinese caused-motion event can be expressed by the V-Direction Structure, as in tā bă mùtong tí shànglái le 他把木桶提上來了 ‘He has lifted the buckets up.’ or the V-Preposition Structure, as in tā bă chē kāi dào nánjīng le 他把車開到南京了 ‘He has driven the car to Nanjing.’ In addition, Chinese commonly use causative markers, such as bǎ 把, shǐ 使, or rang 讓 to express causative motion. As for English, the caused-motion notion in English can only be expressed by a single pattern: the caused-motion construction (i.e., [NP1 V NP2 PP]) and there exist no causative markers in English. On the other hand, Chinese shows more various ways in expressing the Path of motion. In Chinese, the path can be encoded by a preposition or non-predicate verb following a main verb to indicate the direction, such as V在, V到, V向, V往, V上來, V下來, V進來, V出來, V回來, whereas the path of motion in English can only be marked by preposition. The contrast can be shown in (9) and (10):
(9) Chinese caused-motion pattern:
a. 他把車開到南京了。
tā bǎ chē kāi dào nánjīng le he BA car drive arrive Nanjing le
‘He drove the car to Nanjing.’
b. 他把球扔向了我。
tā bǎ qiú rēng xiàng le wǒ
he BA ball throw face le me
‘He threw the ball to me.’
c. 我們把羊群放出去了。
wǒmen bǎ yang.qún fàng chū.qù le we BA goats.group release out.go le
‘We had let go of the goats out.’
(10) English caused-motion pattern:
a. He threw the stone into the river.
b. Jane sewed a button onto the jacket.
Accordingly, a typical Chinese caused-motion construction may show various patterns in encoding a caused-motion event, either with a transitive V-O sequence plus a locational or directional prepositional phrase, or with an overt causative alternation marked by a causative marker, as will be clear in the use of dài 帶 ‘bring’.
2.1.4 Proto-Motion Event in Mandarin Chinese
Concerning motion event in Mandarin Chinese, Liu et al (2013) on the conceptual basis identify and propose the proto-motion sequences in Mandarin. It is identified that Mandarin motion event contains five salient semantic components: Manner, Route, Direction, Endpoint, and Deictic, in which Route, Direction, and Endpoint are the redefined morphemes of the traditional notion of Path. With these components, a Deictic-Incorporated Proto-Motion Event Schema is proposed (Figure 2), which observes the natural motion progression following the left-to-right linear sequence: from Manner to Route to Direction and to Endpoint. The proto-motion event schema thus demonstrates an iconic representation of Mandarin motion event.
Figure 2. The Deictic-incorporated Proto-Motion Event Schema
Following the schema, it is observed that motion verbs may lexicalize one or more of the semantic components in the sequence, such as in the following example:
(11) 球 [滾]Manner[落]Route[進]Direction[到]Endpoint[洞裡]Loc-NP[來]Deictic
qiú gǔn- luò- jìn- dào dònglǐ lai ball roll fall enter arrive hole-inside come
‘The ball rolled and fell down into the hole.’
In (11), the leftmost verb V1 gǔn 滾 ‘roll’ lexically encodes Manner; V2 luò 落 ‘fall’
encodes both Route and Direction; V3 jìn 進 ‘enter’ lexicalizes Direction and Endpoint, and the rightmost V4 specifies Endpoint.
Based on Liu et al (2013), we can observe that Mandarin dài 帶 ‘bring’ depicts a serial motion event that is further involved with a Cause or Causing event, as can be seen from the following example:
(12) 我帶學生 [跑]Manner[到]Endpoint[校外]Loc-NP[去]Deictic
Cause +
wǒ dài xuéshēng pǎo dào xiào.wài qù Sequential motion event
I bring students run arrive campus.outside go
‘I brought the students to run to the outside of the campus.’
2.2 Previous Works on English Verbs Bring and Carry
Since the polysemic verb dài 帶 ‘bring’ in Mandarin literally corresponds to the English verb bring or carry, it is assumed that this verb may share some similarities and differences to its English equivalents. In this section, two previous works on English verbs bring and carry will be reviewed from two different approaches. Section 2.2.1 reviews Levin’s (1993) alternation-based approach on the classification of bring and carry verbs and Section 2.2.2 introduces the frame-based approach on bring and carry in FrameNet.
2.2.1 Levin (1993): Verbs of Sending and Carrying
Levin (1993) assumes that verbal behaviors, particularly with respect to the expression and interpretation of its arguments, provide key evidence to investigate the lexical meaning of verbs. Under this assumption, Levin (1993) sets a pioneering work on the classification of English verb based on the alternative syntactic verbal behaviors.
According to Levin (1993), English verb bring and carry are classified under the Verbs of Sending and Carrying, in which bring and carry are associated with two subclasses.
Table 2 presents the classification of the two verbs:
Verb Class Verbs of Sending and Carrying
Subclass Bring and take Carry Verbs Class
members
bring, take(only) carry, drag, haul, heave, heft, hoist, kick, lug, pull, push, schlep, shove, tote, tow, tug
Examples a. Nora brought the book to the meeting.
b. Nora brought the book from home
a. Amanda carried the package (to New York)
b. *Amanda carried at the package (to New York)
(cf. Nora pushed at/against the chair.)
Table 2. Verbs of Sending and Carrying in Levin (1993)
The verbs bring and take as a subclass has been described as the causative counterparts of come and go. In addition, they are set apart from other verbs by the presence of the deictic component of meaning and the lack of a meaning component that specifies the manner in which the motion is brought out. Moreover, these verbs can also be used as verbs of change of possession brought about by a change of position, as shown by their ability to occur in dative alternation.
(13) Dative Alternation:
a. Nora brought the book to Pamela.
b. Nora brought Pamela the book.
(Levin 1993:134)
As for carry, which is under the subclass of Carry Verbs, has been described as relating to the causation of accompanied motion which must be overtly specified in a prepositional phrase. But differ from other class members that are cross-listed as verbs of exerting force such as push and pull, carry is a verb that does not encode sense of force exertion, as can be seen from the evidence that verbs of exerting force allow conative at phrase while verbs of causation of accompanied motion does not. (e.g. Nora pushed at/against the chair vs. *Amanda carried at the package (to New York))
To sum up the above descriptions, bring and carry have the following shared and distinct characteristics: 1) both are verbs of causative motion that must be specified
overtly by the deictic component in the prepositional phrase, 2) bring does not specify Manner; carry does not encode force exertion. As to the contrast between them, bring can be used as a verb of change of possession brought about by a change of position, while carry seems not, as shown by their contrast in the dative alternation in (14ab) and (14cd):
(14) Dative alternation: bring vs. carry a. Nora brought the book to Pamela b. Nora brought Pamela the book
c. Amanda carried the package to Pamela.
d. ?Amanda carried Pamela the package
2.2.2 Fillmore and Atkins (1992): FrameNet
FrameNet (https://framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu/), created by Charles J. Fillmore and his colleagues in University of California Berkeley, is an online lexical database for English lexicon devised on the basis of frame semantics. It is built up based on the semantic frames of English lexicon, each of which is clearly defined by the core and non-core frame elements together with the support of syntactic evidence extracted from actual texts. In FrameNet, different verbs that share the same frame elements can be in the same semantic frame. Thus, one frame may contain several lemmas of verbs that share similar semantic attributes. Futhermore, FrameNet also shows the associations of different frames by graphing the hierarchical and interrelated structures that demonstrate the frame-to-frame relationships.
According to FrameNet, English verb bring and carry are classified under the Bringing Frame. This frame is defined as follows with an example:
“This frame concerns the movement of a Theme and an Agent and/or Carrier.
The Agent, a person or other sentient entity, controls the shared Path by moving the Theme during the motion. The Carrier may be a separate entity, or it may be the Agent's body.”
e.g. Karl CARRIED the books across campus to the library by truck.
The core frame elements involved in this frame are Agent, Theme, Carrier,
Other from English verbs bring and carry, due to the polysemic nature of dài 帶
‘bring’, the English equivalent lexical units of different meanings of dài 帶 ‘bring’
(noted in Section 1.2) can also be associated with multiple frames in FrameNet, which is summarized in Table 3.
English Lexical Units
Semantic Frames Core Frame Elements 1 bring.v Bringing/Causation Agent, Theme, Carrier, Goal,
Path, Source, Area/Actor (Causer), Affected (Effected) 2 carry.v Bringing/Carry_goods Agent, Theme, Carrier, Goal, Path, Source, Area/Distributor, Goods
4 FrameGrapers in the FrameNet shows the connections of several frames, demonstrating the frame-to-frame relationships by different arrows representing respectively the relationships of Inheritance, Using, Precedes, Perspective_on, Inchoative_of, Causative_of, and See_also.
5 In FrameGraper, ‘Using’ relationship refers to a frame that uses part of background information (some core frame elements) of another frame.
3 lead_(to).v
Table 3. English Equivalent Lexical Units of dài 帶 ‘bring’ in FrameNet
Table 3 shows that the use of dài 帶 ‘bring’ may correspond to different verbs in English, which in turn proves that dài 帶 ‘bring’ indeed manifests the cross-frame nature of lexical meanings. Each lexical meaning, under FrameNet, is categorized in different or shared semantic frames with distinct frame-specific elements. For examples, except for Bringing Frame, English verbs bring and carry are also respectively belong to Causation and Carry_goods Frame. Causation Frame describes a background idea where some event is responsible for the occurrence of another event (or state); that is, a Cause or Actor causes an Effect or Affected. As for Carry_goods Frame, it describes a situation where a Distributor sells, lends, or otherwise distributes a class of Goods. And it is noted that the Distributor may carry some particular goods, but may not have it on hand at that exact moment.
FrameNet indeed provides a useful overview of the semantic information regarding bringing verbs in English. Nevertheless, due to the fact that the semantic frames defined in FrameNet are based on English lexicon, the definition and the defined frame elements may not be felicitous in defining the verbal semantics of Mandarin verbs. In addition, FrameNet did not concern the constructional pattern, so the subtle meaning distinction cannot be retrieved and recognized among the different
lexical units within the same frame. Therefore, to complement FrameNet with constructional criteria, this study will incorporate the constructional analysis in order to provide a more comprehensive and fine-grained account for the polysemic verb dài 帶
‘bring’ in Mandarin.
2.3 Summary
In this chapter, different approaches to the studies of motion events and bringing verbs in English have been reviewed. On the conceptual basis, Talmy (2000) explored the lexicalization patterns of the motion event, while Li (2007) identified the prototypical notion of caused motion with the Prototype Theory. Within a constructional framework, Goldberg (1995) proposed English caused-motion construction considering the form-meaning correspondence, while Pan and Chang (2005) claimed the various patterns for Chinese caused-motion constructions. Liu et al (2003) looked into the unique sequential order of motion verbs and postulated the prototypical linear sequence in Mandarin motion event. On the other hand, Levin (1993) and Fillmore and Atkins (1992) viewed and classified English bring and carry
In this chapter, different approaches to the studies of motion events and bringing verbs in English have been reviewed. On the conceptual basis, Talmy (2000) explored the lexicalization patterns of the motion event, while Li (2007) identified the prototypical notion of caused motion with the Prototype Theory. Within a constructional framework, Goldberg (1995) proposed English caused-motion construction considering the form-meaning correspondence, while Pan and Chang (2005) claimed the various patterns for Chinese caused-motion constructions. Liu et al (2003) looked into the unique sequential order of motion verbs and postulated the prototypical linear sequence in Mandarin motion event. On the other hand, Levin (1993) and Fillmore and Atkins (1992) viewed and classified English bring and carry