Abstract:
The present research has a twofold aim of analyzing syntactico-sematic properties of predicate constructions describing putting and taking events in Thai as well as examining factors motivating the use of each predicate construction from a cognitive linguistic perspective. This study uses a stimuli set, which consists of 44 short videoclips to elicit descriptions of putting and taking events. The result reveals that the predicate constructions under investigation can be subcategorized into two main groups, simplex and complex constructions, according to the number of verbs appearing in the constructions. In simplex predicate constructions, there is only one take or put verb while in complex predicate constructions other verbs beside take and put verbs are added to describe various facets which are salient in the events. Different types of predicate constructions, thus, reflects different conceptualizations of the events. It is also found that the uses of various predicate constructions can be explained in terms of four construal phenomena, namely specificity, focusing, prominence and perspective.