Investigation On The Motivations Of Definiteness Effect In Existential Sentences-a Cognitive Analysis

As the most important semantic property and inherited characteristic of existential sentences-definiteness effect(DE), namely, the post-verbal NP in existential sentences(ES) should be indefinite (in semantic interpretation at least), otherwise the ES containing it will be ungrammatical, has long been noticed and studied. Historically, attempts have been made in almost all the general approaches to it, namely,, descriptive, generative and functional approaches. Although different approaches have been applied to the investigation of this specific linguistic phenomenon. But unfortunately, due to their inherent inadequacies, none of them managed to reach any feasible and satisfactory results. This dissertation attempts to employ a newly born but prosperous approach-cognitive approach to the investigation of this issue. It uses cognitive grammar and the theory of iconicity as the theoretical basis, and draws on a corpus of naturally occurring written data.Enlightened by the formation of existential sentences which manifests a kind of prevailing human experience (Something exists, appears and disappears in some place) and in accordance with the most fundamental assumptions of cognitive grammar and the principles of iconicity, the author puts forward three hypotheses and three associated questions. With the investigation sufficiently finished, the conclusions were naturally attained:(1) The fundamental assumptions of cognitive grammar is competent to exploit a considerably more adequate explanation for the motivation of DE, and at the same time, to demonstrate and support the vitality of cognitive grammar, which will help speed cognitive linguistics.(2) The satisfactory explanations for the exhibition of DE from cognitiveperspective also shows that the formation of linguistic structure is not arbitrary nor innate in the mind, but comes from some simple principle or rule which bears on perception of external linguistic functions. We can explain the formation of many linguistic structures by the perceptive function, particularly the visual and mental perceptions. The explanations for the exhibition of DE and the formation of ES(the formation of ES depends on visual or mental perceptions, through which the object we perceive from the outside world becomes salient against the background or through which we draw an estimation from our experience or understanding of some events) are full proof that we can explain it by the visual and mental perceptions.(3) The satisfactory explanation for the exhibition of DE from iconic perspective demonstrates the exhibition of indefinite NPs in existential sentences corresponds to human being's cognitive model and the rule of information distribution . Based on the principles of temporal iconicity, the Chinese ES pattern NP1oc+VP+NP is proved to be a reflection of temporal iconicity, which follows the order of perception (physical experience) or conceptualization-human being's instant psychological process of occurrence, appearance and disappearance of an event.. Based on the analysis of this structure from temporal iconicity aspect and an analysis of the characteristics of the pattern, VP indicating instant action is characterized at the same time. Considering VP indicating instantaneous act, the agent that human being conceptualized should carry new information .This is true in that when something happened instantaneously, we can't get a factual description but rather the conceptualized images, accordingly, the things we observed should be indefinite. The satisfactory explanation for the exhibition of DE from iconic perspective demonstrated that iconicity hypothesis can provide us with a powerful external motivation for language structure and a new perspective of language study, form which we can see that language is not an entirely autonomous system and can not be independent of meaning.(4)The satisfactory explanation for the motivation of DE from...