Semantic Constraints Of The Chinese Static Existential Construction On Action Verbs: A Corpus-Based Inquiry Into The Event Schema Represented By Existential Action Verbs

Guided by the basic assumptions of cognitive semantics, this dissertation conducts a survey on the semantic relationships between action verbs and the Chinese static existential construction in order to detect verb selection restrictions of this construction. Based on Fillmore's Frame Semantics and Talmy's Motion Event-frames and lexicalization theory, the semantic analysis of action verbs aims to seek out the regular associations between these verbs and certain event semantic components so as to investigate the connections between the events expressed by action verbs and the static existential construction. This dissertation adopts qualitative methods for explanations which are based on adequate instantiations with quantitative data concerning with the action verbs derived from the online Corpus of Modern Chinese developed by Beijing University.Since the 1950s, Chinese existential sentences have gradually attracted the attention of many Chinese linguists who have applied different theories and research methods to the study of various issues concerning existential sentences, including the indefiniteness of NP, the grammatical status of the locatives as well as the pragmatic and rhetorical function of these sentences. All these studies have yielded fruitful results. Yet there still remain a lot of unsolved problems. A comparison between English and Chinese existential sentences reveals that the latter contain a wider range of action verbs in terms of both number and their semantic types. The compatibility between transitive verbs and existential sentences is unique to Chinese and has created an even greater problem in providing a unified explanation for the relationship between action verbs and existential sentences. Unfortunately, the meaning of action verbs was neglected in the previous studies for their limited role in affecting the meaning of the whole sentence. Therefore, a plausible explanation is still not found regarding the reasons for the appearance of action verbs and their semantic deviations in existential sentences.An analysis of several main approaches on this issue (including accusativity of existential verbs, the influence of auxiliary word"Zhe", analysis of semantic features of existential verbs, etc) suggests that the constructional approach has obvious superiority for the following reasons: 1) According to construction grammar, the argument structure of a sentence is derived from the construction instead of the verb so that a unified explanation for existential sentences can be achieved. An advantage of this explanation is that it is not necessary to alter the argument structures of various action verbs so that problems such as the deletion of the agent could be avoided. 2) Semantic deviation of verbs is the consequence of coercion of the constructional meaning. It explains why all types of actions verbs assume similar meanings in existential sentences.However, improvement should be made in the constructional approach of static existential sentences. For instance, the partial productivity, i.e. the selection restrictions of existential sentences, was neglected in previous studies following this approach. Questions like"why can't such action verbs as推(push),摘(pick) and捞(fish) appear in existential constructions"still remain unsolved. Only by exploring the event semantic features of these verbs can we explain these questions in a sensible way.Verbs mainly describe various events in the outside world. Since they are not self-sufficient in meaning, the understanding of verbs involves all kinds of components in their corresponding event frames. This point is clearly illustrated by Fillmore's famous"commercial transaction events". Talmy's analysis of lexicalization pattern of motion verbs shows that the meaning of each verb could be further divided into a collection of many event components. The distribution of these event components is highly systematic and has great influence on a verb's syntactic behaviors. Therefore, the dissertation holds that the incorporation of event components in action verb's meaning could determine whether it is semantically compatible with existential constructions.Based on this assumption, an analysis of the lexicalized event components (i.e. those that have regular semantic association with the verb) is conducted. 17 selected components are the types and numbers of agents, the body parts that initiated the action, spatial ground, starting point of the path, the ending point of the path, instantaneity of the action, duration of the action, force, speed, types and numbers of patients, shape of patients, array of the patients, as well as the change in location and nature of patients. With a detailed analysis of instances'syntactic structure and the above components, the commonalities of the action verbs are summarized as follows: 1) They all have the potentiality of expressing motion events which has an important impact on their compatibility with existential construction; 2) They mainly express concrete scenes in which human beings are major agents; 3) They all involve spatial ground which is an important component in their meaning; 4) They express events from the perspective of the results instead of the process of the action.A study of these above features reveals the following three verb selection constraints of Chinese existential constructions: 1) the action verbs must express concrete actions instead of abstract ones; 2) the action verbs must not focus on the component of force; 3) the action verbs must have the potentiality to express motion events. The events expressed by action verbs are related to that of the Chinese static existential constructions in three ways: the former being manner, cause or accompanying events of the latter. Moreover, the two types of events must share more than one participant. It is the above connections between the events expressed respectively by verbs and constructions that make it possible for action verbs to appear in the Chinese static existential constructions. Besides, this study also shows that the semantic constraints of the Chinese static existential constructions on action verbs are also applicable to English existential constructions.