The Differentiation and Analysis of Pivotal Construction and Similar Syntactic Constructions

Abstract

Since the appearance of “pivotal construction”, scholars have always questioned its existence and wanted to classify it into the category of other syntactic constructions. Therefore, it is necessary to make a more detailed distinction between the pivotal construction and the other similar syntactic constructions. Generally, the pivotal construction can be abbreviated as N1 + V1 + N2 + V2, which is the same as in other syntactic constructions or sentence patterns: subject-predicate structure as the object construction, serial predicate construction, fused serial predicate and pivotal construction. In this paper, syntax combined with semantics, these four simple sentence patterns (syntactic constructions) are taken as examples and analyzed in detail. Finally, we draw a conclusion that N1, V1, N2, V2 have complex relationship on the syntactic structure. Meanwhile, through the semantic analysis and classification of V1, we make a clear distinction of V1 in the four types of simple sentence patterns and the relationship between V1 and V2 is clearly differentiated.