PDF《A Constructional Approach**》

BIBLID 0254-4466(2012)30:1 pp.

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101 年3月) Psych Predicates and Causation in Hakka: A Constructional Approach** Huang Han-chun* Abstract This paper investigates the properties of Hakka psych predicates with a focus on the interaction of lexical semantics and syntax. Based on syntactic realization, psych predicates in Hakka are divided into two types: experiencer- subject (such as the verb fear), including xiag4 to like, seu5 to worry, nau1 to dislike, giang1 to fear, and kien2 to get angry, and stimulus-subject (such as the verb frighten), including hag4 to frighten. All data in this paper are corpus-based and reflect real-world usage of Hakka psych predicates. Psych predicates of the experiencer-subject type have similar syntactic distributions such as allowing degree modification and occurring in result/extent constructions. Psych predicates of the stimulus-subject type express causation in terms of lexical (e.g. hag4 to frighten ), morphological (e.g. V-xi2 Manuscript received: January 30, 2011;

revision completed: December 20, 2011;

manuscript approved: February 16, 2012. * Huang Han-chun (黄汉君) is an assistant professor in the Department of English Instruction at National Hsinchu University of Education. ** This paper is derived from the result of a research project Argument Realization of Hakka Psychological Predicates (NSC 98-2410-H-134-030) sponsored by National Science Council. An earlier draft version was presented at the 59th Annual Conference of the Chinese Linguistic Society of Japan (H. Huang 2009). I would like to express my gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions which helped shape up the final version of this paper. However, I am responsible for any remaining errors found in this paper.

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1 期compounds), or analytic (i.e. periphrastic, syntactic) means (e.g. [bun1+NP+V] and [ded4+ngin5+V], though the latter is fossilized, or lexicalized). The morphological and analytic causatives have the function of converting psych predicates of the experiencer-subject type into those of the stimulus-subject type. Thus they may be viewed as a kind of mechanism to counteract the asymmetry that lexical psych predicates of the stimulus-subject type are outnumbered by those of the experiencer-subject type in Hakka. We adopt the theory of Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1995) which argues that the basic building blocks in grammar are constructions (form- meaning pairings). It has the advantage of explaining the interaction of the psych predicates and the seven sentential constructions (three of the experiencer-subject type and four of the stimulus-subject type) discussed in this paper, without having to resort to additional, ad hoc senses of the psych predicates. ?Keywords:? Construction Grammar, psych predicates, causation, experiencer- subject, stimulus-subject, Hakka 1. Introduction Psych predicates have been a hotly debated topic in the linguistics literature. It is unique in that, unlike typical transitive verbs which have clear-cut distinction between the more agent-like argument (realized as the grammatical subject) and the more patient-like argument (realized as the grammatical object), there is a kind of flip-flop phenomenon found in the psych predicates of the world'

s many languages. This phenomenon is due to the peculiarity of the arguments in psych predicates: their argument roles Experiencer and Stimulus are close in the Proto- Agent-Proto-Patient axis in the sense of Dowty (1991). This paper follows the framework of Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1995) and discusses the interaction of lexical semantics and syntax of Hakka psych Huang Han-chunMPsych Predicates and Causation in Hakka