The Diachronic Development of Causative Disposal Construction"NP1+Ba+NP2+VP"
Recent studies on the causative disposal construction have been concerned with the sources of different subcategories in the constructional family.However,there is a lack of in-depth and detailed analysis of the evolution of specific constructions.This study aims to enhance existing research by providing a finer-grained and more objective examination of the development of a particular construction.The case study is the development of"NP1+ba+NP2+VP"construction.Based on the CCL corpus,the NP1,NP2,and VP are semantically coded,and conditional inference trees and random forest analysis are employed to investigate the characteristic changes of each component and their impact on the constructional change.The results show a continuum from disposal meaning to a more causative meaning in its evolution.Throughout the process,the semantics of the VP demonstrates to be a prominent variable.NP1's control over NP2 is weakening,while NP2's controlling of the event represented by VP is increasing.Furthermore,the events represented by VP develop from single events to double events,and from displacement events to state change events.The study provides a diachronic exploration of the causative disposal construction"NP1+ba+NP2+VP",intending to provide further insights into the overall development of disposal constructions.
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