Abstract:
For decades, the argument alternate realization relations between conceptual contents and various constructions and their cognitive processes have remained as perennial vexing issues for many schools of theoretical linguistics alike.Among the prevailing theories are the prototype view and the hierarchical correspondence view.However, they are inapplicable to quite a few Chinese constructions.Are surface-level syntactic structures determined by meanings? This question remains a hot topic for debate.This present paper argues that the conceptual contents of event cover all the possible associated constructions.It also argues that all the units of conceptual contents are treated with various degrees of prominence to form various profiling configurations.Various profiling patterns integrated with the conceptual contents are realized as different constructions of the same event.This paper attempts to develop a Cognitive Event Frame to account for the conceptual contents of events and to propose general profiling configurations to account for different profiling treatments of conceptual contents.The integration of the Cognitive Event Frame with its various profiling patterns determines the realizations of alternate constructions.The paper also, with Chinese data of PUT-event, verifies the operational feasibility of the integration model.