Abstract

The theory of verb-assignment in the traditional argument structure cannot offer a satisfactory explanation for the specific grammatical structures and semantic features of Chinese verb-resultative constructions. By distinguishing the conceptual content from the grammatical meaning and representing the sentence-level conceptual content in Conceptual Frames, the grammatical realization rules of verb-resultative constructions can be analyzed more accurately. The conceptual frame of a verb-resultative construction is mainly composed of action conceptual structure and causation conceptual structure; and the participants in these two conceptual structures will be conflated and realized as the relevant argument roles in the semantic structure. When the Causee is conflated with different participants in the action conceptual structure, it can be construed in different ways, and realized in different positions in the corresponding semantic and grammatical structures, thereby ultimately influencing the whole configuration of the verb-resultative construction.

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