The Chinese Transitive Resultative Construction Manifested by Double-Layer Event Model

Chinese transitive resultative sentences contain a complex of thematic role configurations with different semantic connections.Construction Grammar can classify them as a number of variations in narrow and broad senses.Focusing on the narrow-sensed construction,this study breaks the causative event into two layers:macroscopic and microscopic.The causer and causee in the former layer are projected onto the subject and object positions of the construction,while semantic roles in the latter layer are selectively projected onto these positions,compacted and highlighted.The roles compacted are aided by grammatical metonymy.This double-layer event model can be applied to manifest the relevant encoding and decoding processes.Different from English,there are quite a few transitive resultative variations in Chinese.This is made possible by its function-oriented trait.