A Study of the Patient Subject Construction in the Framework of Cognitive Grammar
From the perspective of the patient,the patient subject construction(hereafter PSC)in Chinese typically profiles the change of state that happens to the patient and the on-going state resulting from the interaction between the agent and the patient.Atypical PSCs,in contrast,profiles the change of state and the resultant state that the instrument,locative or other affected participant undergoes by putting the interaction between the agent and the patient in the background.Syntactically,the agent is suppressed as it lies outside the coding system of the PSC.Semantically,as the PSC profiles the final and result phases of the event where the agent stops acting on the patient,that is,the non-agentive phases without input of energy,the PSC takes on unaccusativity.