A Cognitive Study Of The "Be+Locative Preposition+Action Noun" Construction In English

The study of locative prepositional phrases is an important and heated issue of research in English grammar. Yet few scholars have paid enough attention to the "be+locative preposition+action noun" construction expressing progressive meaning. Previous studies on this topic are mainly descriptive, failing to give systematic theoretical explanations. This thesis has conducted a cognitive study of the "be+locative preposition+action noun" construction by analyzing its semantic and syntactic features and providing a systematic account of its cognitive motivation from the angle of spatial metaphorical mapping and form-meaning pairing of construction.Guided by the theory of construction grammar, the thesis has tried to explicate the form and meaning of the "be+locative preposition+action noun" as a construction. It has investigated "be+locative preposition+ action noun" as a construction in semantics and syntax. The thesis has depicted the meaning and form and identified the semantic and syntactic constraints of "be+locative preposition+action noun" as a construction. Semantically, "be+locative preposition+action noun" as a construction conveys progressive meaning with special forms, which can be further classified into active progressive meaning and passive progressive meaning. By probing into the related literature and the British National Corpus, the thesis summarizes that locative prepositions in/on/at/under can enter the construction. In regard to the semantic features, the thesis maintains that the four locative prepositions share the semantic characteristics of expressing space, time and state. Other locative prepositions fail to meet these requirements. As regards the semantic constraints of action nouns, the thesis points out that the abstract action nouns derived from verbs which have the potentiality of being "dynamic" agree with the demands of the construction. In the meantime, it also manages to expound its syntactic form and identify the probable syntactic constraints. "Be+locative preposition+action noun" as a construction functions as predicate to "be" as the link-verb, and the locative prepositional phrase functions as subject complement. As to the syntactic constraints of the component parts, the thesis holds that the link-verb "be" is the only verb that can enter the construction. The locative prepositions at, in, on and under can enter the construction because of their function of position, destination and time. Action nouns to enter the construction must be uncountable, non-typical abstract nouns derived or converted from dynamic verbs.On the basis of the research above, the thesis has expounded on the cognitive motivation of the "be+locative preposition+action noun" construction. Semantically, the construction carries progressive meaning, whose essence is to represent a dynamic process as a state. The locative prepositions seem to indicate space relation between the trajector and the landmark, but in essence they reveal the spatial state relation between them. The study indicates that the spatial concepts of in/on/at/under with be and action nouns are projected from the spatial state domain to the non-spatial state domain through spatial metaphorical mapping, which results in the generation of the progressive meaning of the construction. The similarity in the state feature between the source spatial domain and the target non-spatial domain is the cognitive base for the working function of the spatial metaphorical mapping. The thesis has also studied the cognitive motivation for the syntactic form of "be+locative preposition+action noun" construction, proposing that the form-meaning pairing of a construction is the mechanism of its formal realization, and that it is the integration of the progressive meaning of the construction and the form that results in the special syntactic form of the construction.