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영어

This paper analyzes the syntactic and semantic features of the causative construction “X+shi+NP+VP” by using metonymy theory, according to the strength of causality, the meaning of this construction can be divided into “causative reason—causative object— causative result” and “influencer—(influence force)—influenced people or things—influence results”. The causative reason consists of two parts: the causer and caused behaviour, and can be understood that an action or the influence of something becomes causative reason, then acts on the causative object causing the object to produce a certain causative result. Metonymy serves as a cognitive reference point, things with high degree of prominence often become references to things with low prominence, reference is the main function of metonymy. In a cognitive domain, metonymy is a conceptual mapping that maps from the source domain to target domain. Metonymy allows us to pay more attention to some specific aspects of the things we refer to, and the metonymy forms of causative construction “X+shi+NP+VP” are “causer—causative reason” metonymy and “caused behaviour—causative reason” metonymy. According to the influence degree of the causer on the causative object, a causer can be divided into direct causer and indirect causer, and under the effect of the principle of cognitive prominence, the relatively prominent behaviour can effectively activate causative reason and form a complete conceptual framework in the process of experience-based cognition. We understand and interpret metonymy in communication based on relevance theory, metonymy is a kind of association-appointment, various factors will be related to each other in the events. In causative construction “X+shi+NP+VP”, the intrinsic relevance of information creates certain conditions for the realization of metonymy mechanism. Metonymy can be interpreted from the following three aspects: firstly, the proximity relationship in the same cognitive domain provides a possibility. Secondly, source domain can be mapped to target domain. Thirdly, associative logical structure can be established from the communication. Fourthly, the principle of relevance in cognition and communication is helpful to the projection of cognitive objects.