The Felicitous Occurrence Of Nominals In ETS: A Cognitive Grammatical Approach

Existential-There Sentence (hereinafter ETS), as a complicated syntactic phenomenon, arouses great interest in linguists with such issues as the role and function of "there", the range of predicate verbs, and restrictions on post-verbal nominals, which in traditional studies are termed "noun phrases". This thesis focuses attention on restrictions on nominals, which has been under heated discussion yet not given a satisfactory explanation.Two major views have been proposed related to restrictions on nominals: Definiteness Effect (hereinafter DE) in traditional grammar and Topic Restriction advanced by Michael Hannay in functional grammar of the Netherlands. Since these two views fail in giving an integrative explanation for the functions of nominals in ETS and in discourse, they are inadequate in their proposals.This paper takes mainly a cognitive grammatical approach to the felicitous occurrence of nominals in ETS. Langacker's discourse space theory, supplemented by Fauconnier's mental space theory, is employed to analyze the functions of nominals in ETS and in discourse. Based on the illustration of cognitive environment of nominals in ETS, we reach a conclusion that: a nominal is felicitous in ETS given that the entity designated by the nominal can be made mental contact with in the current discourse space of ETS through the role, the value, or the property of the entity profiled. The current discourse space can be the immediate physical world, a portion of it, or a shifted physical world. And the latter two are usually instantiated by locational phrases. This conclusion justifies the occurrence of many definite nominals that violate DE and Topic Restriction. Also discussed in the paper are the grounding nominals in ETS, which concern the communicative intention of the addresser. Two typical grounding nominals (the-marked nominals and α-marked nominals) in ETS are analyzed for a new interpretation of definiteness. The analysis supports and develops the conclusion.The originality of the study resides in the fact that it can provide a more comprehensive and powerful explanation for the felicitous occurrence of nominals in ETS by initiating sentence and discourse analysis in the spirit of cognitive grammar.This paper consists of 5 chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the need for the study, and aims of the study as well as the organization of the thesis. Chapter 2 is literature review of restrictions on nominals in ETS in traditional and functional grammar. Chapter 3 proposes a cognitive grammatical approach to the analysis of ETS as a marked sentence and nominals in the sentence. In chapter 4, the cognitive grammatical approach to discourse is first introduced. Then the discourse environment of ETS is illustrated to reveal the functions of nominals in discourse. And a conclusion is made about the felicitous conditions of nominals in ETS. This chapter also makes an investigation into the typical grounding nominals in ETS concerning definiteness. Chapter 5 is the conclusion in which the study is summarized, some limitations of it are pointed out and suggestions for further research are put forward.