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The present study proposes the Hypothesis of the Constructional Field, to further
illustrate the problem of verbs’ admittance into the DOC, in the background of
usage-based approach and Construction Grammar.
We hypothesize that the constructions out of the network of the inheritance
relations may form a constructional field, of which the motivation may come from the
shared semantic features of the constructions or from the comparatively high
frequency of co-occurrence or alternating occurrence of the constructions. The
interaction between the constructions may influence the mechanism of the verbs’
admittance into the constructions within the constructional field.
To further illustrate the Hypothesis of the Constructional Field, as well as to
adopt the hypothesis to explain the mechanism of verbs’ admittance into the DOC, we
chose a group of non-ditransitive verbs, the CARRY VERBS as examples to conduct
some corpus-based frequency analyses on English and Chinese DOCs. Interpretations
and explanations are given in the guidance of the Hypothesis with the help of
frequency-based descriptions of dative alternation constructional fields.
After analysis, we find that:
1) there exists dative alternation constructional fields in both English and
Chinese. The dative alternation constructional fields in both English and
Chinese show the connection between constructions in the aspect of
frequency and show consistency with our prediction that in a
constructional field no more than two possible constructions can a verb
enter and can exist as the conventional forms of the verb. For the rest of
the constructions that the verb cannot enter, the verb will keep the
potential and wait for a particular trigger point.
2) as long as a verb enters a dative alternation constructional field, it may
be given the potential to go into any constructions in the field. When the
DOC in the field can successfully build a connection in association to
any other constructions in the field, the potential may be activated,
which will send the verb into the DOC. The way of building the
connection is determined by the meaning of the DOC and the
distribution of constructions in the dative alternation field.
3) CARRY VERBS in English generally cannot enter the DOC and the
possible reason is that the association between the DOC and other
constructions in the field is not the only one, which will block the
successful formation of the association. Meanwhile there are cases that
CARRY VERBS do enter the DOC when the connection is limited to
only one by means of context or because of the weight of the direct
object.
4) CARRY VERBS in Chinese generally cannot enter the DOC, but the
negative connection that happens occasionally may “negatively” trigger
the potential and send CARRY VERBS into the DOC in very rare cases.
The negative connection is built on the contrary association between the
meaning of “to give” of GEI-dative constructions and “ to take” of the
DOC of CARRY VERBS in Chinese. In addition, the uncertainty of the
meaning of the DOC in Chinese may cause ambiguity which needs to be
eliminated by other linguistic or non-linguistic factors which may
actually have the final say on whether the DOC of CARRY VERBS will
turn into an exemplar or not.