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Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Research Background
The adoption of construction as a academic term can be traced back to ancientStoics (Goldberg, 2006). Later, some linguistic schools, such as Structuralism,Transformational Generative Grammar, Functional Grammar and so on, also studiedit and have their own definition of it (Bloomfield, 1933; Leech, 1974; Chomsky,1991; Halliday, M. A. K., 2000, Taylor, 2002). However, the definition given byConstruction Grammar from the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics is the mostpopular one that holds the view -- construction is a pairing of form and meaning(Langacker, 1987; Goldberg, 1995; Fillmore, 1988; Croft, 2005), that is to say,construction has its own meaning as a whole independent from the meaning of itsparts.Construction grammar is a kind of science which studies the theory of grammarbecoming popular in 1980s. From then on, many kinds of construction have beenstudied from the perspective of Construction Grammar, which includes possessiveconstruction, double noun construction (VNN), dative construction (VNp N),verb-noun construction (VN), adverb-noun construction in Chinese, resultativeconstructions and so on. It claims that construction is the basic unit of language andthe meaning of the sentence is the interaction between the constructive meaning andthe lexical meaning. When the constructive meaning of a sentence is congruous withthe lexical meaning of it, these two meanings will mutually reinforce. However,when the constructive meaning of a sentence is incongruous with the lexical meaningof it, the meaning of the sentence will be comprehended from the angle of“coercion”.
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1.2 Research Objective
The notion of inertia coercion was firstly put forward by Wang Yin(2009)through the study of “adverb-noun” construction in Chinese. As we all know,“adverb-noun construction” in our speaking or writing will not be accepted easily.However sometimes we still can understand what it express because that sometimewe are able to understand it in psychology forced by the other appropriate collocation,just like a kind of inertia. According to Wang Yin (2009), this linguistic phenomenonwas called as “inertia coercion”. He believed that inertia coercion can be explainedfrom the perspective of embodied philosophy. In our real life, physical inertia is aquite common phenomenon: if people want to stop after fast running, he alwayskeeps running for a while. Therefore, he adopted physical inertia to “cognitiveinertia”, namely, “thinking inertia” and explained “inertia coercion” by employing“normal collocation+adverb-noun construction”. Inertia coercion can be brieflydivided into two sorts: front inertia coercion and back inertia coercion. For instance,in sentences like “她的表情很萌、很傅园慧” and “配音演员很动漫、很激昂”, “很萌” is the normal “adverb-adjective” construction that can be easily understood, but“很傅园慧” is the “adverb-noun” construction which cannot be accepted easily butwe still can understand what it refers to because “很萌” the appropriate collocationaffects “很傅园慧” the inappropriate collocation by thinking inertia and we knowwho Fu Yuanhui is and how she is. Except that, there are other kinds of inertiacoercion. For instance, “The fire burned the house and the memory of herchildhood.”. In this sentence, “The fire” can not burn “the memory” in reality.However, the sentence can be easily understood because “burned the house” theappropriate collocation affects “burned the