A Construction Grammar Approach To The Existential-Presentational Sentence In Modern Chinese

The existential-presentational (EP) sentence in modern Chinese is a much discussed linguistic phenomenon in the grammar. Previous explorations of the phenomenon can be roughly divided into ontological studies and theoretical studies. The former consists of synchronic studies, which include researches on the delimitation, characteristics and classification of the EP sentence, and diachronic studies, while the latter is mainly composed of studies from different theoretical approaches, including the traditional grammar approach, the formal linguistic approach, the three-dimensional approach, the cognitive approach and the construction grammar approach (Goldberg,1995), which are quite fruitful, providing us with a better understanding of the phenomenon.The present research follows the construction grammar approach to the Chinese EP sentence, and addresses three issues:the existence of the construction, polysemy of the construction and productivity of the construction. The discussion of the polysemy of the construction is the focus of this research.Following Goldberg (1995), it is argued that the Chinese EP sentence is an instance of construction given its particular form, meaning and use. That is, it has a meaning independently of the verbs. The meaning of the EP construction is "there exists someone or something in some place". One advantage of the constructional approach to the EP sentence is that implausible verb senses are avoided. The sense of existence found in the verbs occurring in EP expressions is attributed to the construction rather than to the lexical meaning of the verbs.In addition, it is argued that the Chinese EP construction is an instance of constructional polysemy. Although it has long been recognized that Chinese EP expressions involving "you", "shi", "v+zhe", "v+le", "verbs of appearance" and "verbs of disappearance" have related meanings despite the differences they exhibits, but no explanatory analysis is made. On the present account, it is claimed that such a polysemous feature of the EP expressions can be naturally captured by constructional polysemy. It is argued that the EP construction is associated with several closely related senses which make reference to specific verb classes mentioned above. The sense represented by the verb "you" is claimed to be the central sense of the construction, and other senses can be economically considered as the extensions from this sense. The senses which make reference to each of the verb classes are explicated in the present thesis.Concerning the productivity of the construction, it is argued that the subclasses instantiated by "shi" and "you" are unproductive in that they have too few instances to form similarity clusters. The subclasses instantiated by "v+zhe", "v+le", "verbs of appearance", and "verbs of disappearance" are more likely to be productive because they are associated with high type frequency.