Typological Research Of Existential Categories

Taking existential category as the research object,this dissertation aims to analyze existential construction and other factors such as existential theme,existential verbs,and the characteristics of the tense-aspect and the case,and it also combines the existential constructions with word order and other related constructions such as locative constructions and possessive constructions in order to find out typological characteristics and universals in cross-languages,such as Sino-Tibetan languages,Indo-European languages,Altaic languages,South Asian languages,Bantu languages,Uralic languages,and Sumerian languages.Meanwhile,it uses the semantic map mode,language types,cognitive linguistic theories,generative grammar theories and other theories to analyze and explain the universals and motivations in the existential category.This dissertation believes that the semantic type characteristics and internal attributes of existential theme have a great influence on existential constructions and existential verbs,which should be one of the criteria for determining existential constructions.At the same time,according to the cross-linguistic researches,it is found that the intrinsic attributes of existential theme also have a certain effect on personal pronouns,locative particles,mood particles,and tense particles.In addition,the subject of the existential constructions has always been a hot issue in academic circles.This dissertation assumes that the existential theme is the subject of existential constructions,and attempts to demonstrate and explore commonality from the perspective of typology.It is found that many languages use syntactic means such as case markers,auxiliary words,and affixes to mark locative phrases in across-linguistic research of existential constructions,such as in the Sino-Tibetan,Altaic,South Asian,Austronesian,and Bantu languages.Meanwhile,the subject is in zero form in general.At the same time,in the case where there is no case markers in locative existential constructions and demonstrative existential constructions,thisdissertation attempts to prove that the existential theme is the subject of existence constructions through linguistic types,argument configuration and generative grammar.Then this dissertation aims to find types and coding form of existential constructions in cross-linguistic researches such as in Sino-Tibetan languages,Indo-European languages,Altaic languages,South Asian languages,Bantu languages,Uralic languages,and Sumerian languages.It finds that there are two main encoding types: demonstrative pronoun encoding type and predicative encoding type.Based on the predication encoding types,it aims to describe and explain the semantic map of the existential verbs.Based on the semantic maps and grammaticalized path,it explores the universals between existential verbs,copulas verbs,possessive verbs,and locative verbs and other predicative forms.Meanwhile,this dissertation finds that the disappearing existential verbs exist in Sino-Tibetan languages,Altaic languages,South Asian languages,Bantu languages,Uralic languages,and Sumerian languages but not in Indo-European languages.So based on this linguistic phenomenon,this dissertation tries to finds out this motivation through accusative-ergative syntactic language modes,linguistic types and causative resulative structure,and the different grammaticalization of existential verbs and other aspects taking English and Chinese existential verbs in typological perspective.From the perspective of linguistic typology,this dissertation finds that Progressive and Continuous,and their related grammatical morphemes in cross-language are mostly are derived from existential verbs,including existential,possessive,copulative,displacement and locative semantics.This linguistic phenomenon is universal in cross-language.On this basis,this dissertation seeks the evolution and implication of the existential verbs and tense-aspect markers in the perspective of typology.Existential construction refers to “somewhere exists,appears or disappears somebody or something”,and is generally composed of existential theme(T),locative phrase(L)and existential verbs(V),but in different language word order,the types of existential construction are different.So this dissertation summarizes the basic wordorder types of existential sentences into three types: L + T + V,V + T + L and L + V +T.At the same time,it explores the implied hierarchy and the main reasons for the above phenomena in existential constructions between T,L,and V.This dissertation also aims to investigates and explores the encoding types of the conceptual structure of existential constructions in across-languages,and attempts to describe and explain the types of word order of existential constructions.And it is found that the construction consists of locative existential construction and pro-formal existential construction.And it also combine the two coding types with the language word order to explore the implied commonality or type characteristics.There are only three types of existential sentence types in four language word orders: SVO language word order corresponds to LVT order,SOV language word order corresponds to LTV order,VSO/VOS language word order corresponds to VTL order,and there are no other three order types: TVL,TLV,VLT.This leads to a implicational universal: if L is post-set,then T is post-position;if T is pre-positioned,L is pre-positioned.Finally,it is considered that Definiteness Effect,Topicalization,Lenient Leading Principle,and Semantic Proximity Principle,and the intransitive characteristics of existential verbs are the main reasons for the typological characteristics of existential sentences and language word order.This dissertation attempts to combine linguistic typology and construction grammar in order to seek across-linguistic typological characteristics and implicative universals between existential,locative and possessive constructions.Finally,based on the typological characteristics between existential and locative constructions.This dissertation aims to find out the universals between them and analyze the reasons of the universals.Finally,through the interpretation and analysis of the findings,it indicates that the split ergativity of Chinese existential sentence is determined by the split ergativity of the arguments case,the non-transitive verbs from the transitive ones,and the syntactic hierarchy of animacy hierarchy,and the split ergativity is a language universal in the typological perspective.