The Construction Of The System Network Of The Existential Meaning In Chinese

Since the concept of the Chinese existential clause was first proposed in Mashi Wentong(Ma's Understanding of Language,1898),the studies of Chinese existential clauses(CECs)have became a heated topic among the scholars.Despite the abundant researches on CECs,scholars still have not reached a consensus on some issues concerning the syntactic and semantic analyses of CECs.And there is no very delicate system network of the existential meaning in Chinese.This study investigates the existential meaning in Chinese from the perspective of the Cardiff(Model of Systemic Functional)Grammar.On the basis of Halliday's view of ‘lexis as the most delicate grammar',it aims to explore how the existential meaning in Chinese was realized by examining 3000 samples of CECs from different corpora.In particular,it aims to construct the system network of the existential meaning and investigate how the differentiated existential meanings are represented in the system network,and eventually realized by different existential verbs.According to the syntactic and semantic analyses of the collected CECs,this study reveals that their initial elements predominantly serves as Location,known information/Theme,which is usually expressed by a locative nominal group or a preposition group.Alternatively,the initial elements may serve as Direction or the Agent-Carrier or Affected Carrier(Possessor).The verbs in CECs realize the sub-processes of the relational process;and the post-verbal constituents,which are expressed by nominal groups,acts as the different types of Carrier,information focus and Subject-theme.On this basis,this study focuses on the semantics of the existential verbs,and proposes that the verbs in locational,directional and possessive CECs mainly express the meaning of ‘locational existence',‘locomotion',and ‘possession',which constitute the three primary system networks of existential meaning.Furthermore,the meaning of ‘appearance',‘being' and ‘disappearance' can also be differential in each of these three systems.Then the thesis examines how the differential existential meanings were realized by different verbs,and construct a more delicate systemnetwork of Chinese existential meaning.This research complements the study of the Chinese existential meaning to some extent and also contributes to the foreign Chinese teaching.On the other hand,it can also testify to the universality of systemic functional linguistic theories--they are not only suitable for English,but also for Chinese grammatical analysis.