英文摘要 |
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: experiencersubject (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 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. |