| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 外國語文學系外國文學與語言學碩士班 === 99 === Abstract
This paper explores the issues of force dynamics discussed in Talmy (2000) by investigating Force Interaction Verbs (FIVs) in Mandarin. The ways physical entities interact with each other in terms of force provide the conceptual bases for various causative relations. According to Talmy, force dynamics as a semantic category exhibits a unilateral force interaction in which “one force-exerting entity is singled out for focal attention and the second one, correlatively, is considered for the effect that it has on the first, effectively overcoming it or not (Talmy 2000: 413). Several major force schemas were distinguished. Mandarin FIVs, however, display a categorical complexity distinct from that of English in terms of how force schemas are lexicalized and how context helps to determine the balance of strength upon force interactions.
This study aims to investigate the possible unilateral force interactions distinguished in Mandarin FIVs as well as the constructional variations associated with each distinct lexicalization patterns. It also helps to explain how Manipulation causatives such as 令lìng/使shĭ/讓ràng/叫jiào are alternatively used as causative markers to lexicalize purposeful forces in variety in Mandarin.
Under the assumption that verb meanings are anchored in semantic frames with lexically-profiled specificities (Fillmore and Atkins 1992, Goldberg 2005), Verbs of relational force are analyzed and re-constructed with a frame-based taxonomy, following the classificational scheme established in Liu and Chiang (2008) with an extendable hierarchy of semantic scopes: Archiframe > Primary frame > Basic frame > Microframe. It is proposed that the correlations of semantic properties and syntactic behaviors characteristic of Mandarin FIVs are triggered and modeled upon a number of extensional patterns of force interactions. By offering a cognitive semantic account, the study not only proposes a frame-based explanation of the polysemy of 讓ràng, but ultimately draws implications on the cognitive-linguistic correspondences pertaining to the domain of force relations for both language-specific and cross-linguistic generalizations.
Keywords: Force Interaction Verbs, Force Dynamics, Frame Semantics
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