构式化视角下英语临界复杂介词的固化研究

A Constructionalization Approach to the Entrenchment of English Marginal Complex Prepositions

英语复杂介词应界定为词还是短语,学界未有定论。本文以构式化理论为视角,借助语义向量空间的定量方法,考察临界复杂介词in the face of的固化过程。本研究发现:1)在过去200年间,该构式的能产性和图式性增加,而组构性降低。从基于使用的视角来看,这种变化趋势不仅反映了构式固化程度的增强,同时也表明其逐渐向介词范畴的演进;2)该构式的固化过程并不是单向的线性发展,而是表现为构式节点间横向和纵向关系的变化;3)该构式固化的动因有二:一是高能产性导致的组块效应,二是识解层面的语义简化。

The ongoing debate on whether an English complex preposition should be classified as a word or a free phrase remains unsolved.From the perspective of constructionalization,this paper investigates the entrenchment of the marginal complex preposition"in the face of"by employing the quantitative method of semantic vector space.The study finds that(1)over the past 200 years,both the productivity and schematicity of the construction have increased,whereas its compositionality has decreased.From a usage-based perspective,this trend not only reflects an increased degree of its entrenchment,but also indicates its gradual change towards the preposition category.(2)The entrenchment does not follow a unidirectional linear progression,but rather is characterized through changes in both horizontal and vertical links among constructional nodes.(3)This entrenchment is motivated by two key factors,the chunking effect caused by high productivity and the semantic simplification at the construal level.