A Cognitive Approach To The Vi+NP Construction In Chinese

The study of the phenomenon of the Vi + NP construction in Chinese can be traced back to the 1940s. Earlier linguists confine their studies on the phenomenon to its syntactic structure, the meaning of the intransitive verbs and the semantic role of the NP, leaving the overall study of it in specific sentence patterns concealed. Cognitive linguists try to construct their theoretical frame to interpret the phenomenon from Ideal Cognitive Model (ICM), Stereotypical Relation and Decategorization and so on. Yet some of the issues still await a satisfactory solution, for example, the meaning and structure construction of the Vi + NP construction in existential sentences and emergent sentences in Chinese.The conceptual integration theory is based on mental space theory proposed by Gilles Fauconnier. Conceptual integration occurs during on-line dynamic construction of full meaning. Grammatical blending, a type of conceptual integration, is a model for the analysis of sentence generation and interpretation. Conceptual integration theory has been widely applied to interpret various language phenomena like metaphor, euphemism, proverbs, etc. Besides, Prominence principle, as one of the most important views in cognitive linguistics can be applied to explain the reason for the existence of the phenomenon of the Vi + NP construction in ChineseConceptual Blending and Grammatical Blending will be used to analyze and discuss the meaning and structure construction of the Vi + NP construction in existential sentences and emergent sentences in Chinese. Through specific qualitative analysis of the two sentence patterns, it is found that the Vi + NP construction in existential sentences and emergent sentences is the result of conceptual integration and grammatical blending of two subevents with basic grammatical structure of NP1 + Vt + NP2 and NP2 + Vi respectively. In addition, the study in this thesis has proved that conceptual integration and grammatical blending theories are animate and have mighty explanatory power in this specific linguistic phenomenon.