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Tóm tắt
| An important question in linguistic research is how complex predicates representing “causal chain” are formed in typologically different languages. This paper presents a new proposal bearing on this question.We compare three typologically different languages. i.e. Chinese, English, and Japanese, and argue for the following hypothesis: the strategy used to form causal chain predicates is crosslinguistically the same, but the ways in which they are formed can be varied from language to language. The common strategy employed to form causal chain complex predicates consists of two stages: the primary articulation, which is fundamental, and the secondary articulation, which provides the specifics. The primary articulation adds an end point,resulting in the semantic frame and yielding an accomplishment event. The secondary articulation futher supplies restrictive elements and sets specific restrictive on the attained end point. On the other hand, the different manners for the formation of chain complex predicates arise from the different typological traits of the languages. For example, a morphologically complex language tends use morphological means to form complex predicates, as in Japanese, which invariably uses morphological rather than syntactic means for the primary articulation.On the other hand, morphological simple languages tend to employ syntactic means to form complex predicate, as in Thai, which depends on syntactic means for the primary articulation. English is somewhere between morphologically complex languages and morphological simple languages. As a result, both morphological means and sytactic means are used for the primary articulation of complex prediates. Chinese as an analytics language tends to employ syntactic means for the primary articulation of the complex predicates. The sole difference between Chinese and Thai is that the resultative construction in Chinese are subject to a futher lexicalization process, whereas those in Thai are not. |