A Constructional Approach To Locative Inversion In English

As a subtype of inverted sentences,locative inversion(LI)has been the subject of many linguists' attention with different approaches for some decades now.Inverted sentences are frequently used in language out of special functions.Due to the special linguistic form and pragmatic function different from the canonical word order,LI has aroused the interests of linguists to conduct investigation on its features in various aspects.Several perspectives including cognitive approach,discourse-functional approach,generative grammar,and typological perspective are adopted to explore the confusions on LI by previous researchers.Although considerable achievements have been obtained,there are still some issues and controversies remained.For example,linguists hold different points of view on the subject-verb agreement,and the restraints on each component in the construction are far to be consistent,mainly focusing on the requirements of verbs.In addition,even though some researchers have called the LI sentence as a construction(Nishihara 1999,Kempchinsky 2002,K?rnebro 2010,Webelhuth 2011,etc.),few of them have adopted the theory of Construction Grammar(CG)as the theoretical basis.On account of these problems,the research on LI has not been completed.This study is mainly to find out what are the specific restraints on each component in the construction,what is the main function of LI,and what are the inheritance links between LI and other two constructions there-sentence and possessive construction.Based on CG,this study focuses on the form as well as the meaning of LI in English.Meanwhile,the theory of event structure is adopted to decompose the cognitive mechanism of LI.It is claimed in this thesis that different from a fixed substantive construction,LI in English is an event schema,i.e.,schematic construction,which tends to present dynamic occurrence or disappearance of an event,showing several inheritance links with other two constructions mentioned above.The major findings include the following:(1)The specific properties and constraints on each component in the construction are analyzed by illustrating the LI constructions in the corpora.The tense of verbs can be present,past,future and perfect.The passive form is also acceptable because it shows similar features with unaccusative verbs.The reason that why some unergative verbs can enter LI construction is that that they have undergone the process of unaccusativization through the semantic relationship between the postverbal NP and locative PP.The unaccusativization of unergative verbs is illustrated in Fig.4-2.Meanwhile,it is also partially accounted by the coercion effect of LI construction on unergative verbs.In terms of the postverbal NP,the most outstanding property is that it becomes the focus of the sentence.The restraint on NP is that it should provide newer information than the preverbal PP.In addition,there are certain interactions between the three constituents,and they can select each other.Mutual predictability is a basic principle for the three components,that is to say,there must be certain internal and logical relations between them.(2)Based on the investigation on each component and the interaction within the construction,the constructional meanings of LI are determined,including three different aspects.First,LI construction expresses the static existence,dynamic emergence or disappearance of the postverbal NP by giving salience to the fronted PP.Second,it conveys the sense of introducing new information in the nominal component,which is also a part of its constructional meaning.Third,LI constructions also have several practical functions,such as its application in sports broadcasting and news report.(3)there-sentence and LI construction are similar in their formal components.However,the locative information can be implicit in there-sentence but mandatory in LI.There are mainly three semantics distinctions between them: the location information is clearly given in LI construction,but the information depends on whether the locative PP has its place in the case of there-sentence;LI can denote the disappearance of something/someone,but there-sentence cannot;the semantics of the two constructions have shown different tendencies,i.e.,there-sentence tends to denote static existence and LI,with a wide range of verbs,tends to express dynamic state and motion of the NPs.From the perspective of discourse function,the NP in LI construction can introduce discourse-new and hearer-new/old information,but there-sentence cannot introduce hearer-old information.(4)The semantics of LI and possessive constructions are closely correlated in that they can both denote the existence and disappearance of something/someone.However,LI is from the spatial dimension,and possessive construction conveys the meaning by establishing or breaking the possessive relation between the possessor and the possessee.On the basis of this finding,there lies a metaphorical extension between LI and possessive construction because of their conceptual similarities when decomposing their stages according to temporal sequence,which is illustrated in Tab.5-2.The conceptual schemas are extended to event schemas of the two constructions.The two schemas are different in that there is only one participant in LI,the agent of the event is often implicit,and the locative PP serves as the setting of the event.Possessive construction involves two participants,the possessor and the possessee.The consequence is caused by the internal mechanism of projection from semantic roles to argument roles.This thesis,revealing different aspects of LI construction based on CG theory,attempts to explore the unsolved issues of LI while investigating its relation with other constructions from a comparative perspective,by taking both the form and meaning into consideration.Based on the constructional relations between LI and other constructions,the claim that LI in English is an event schema is further strengthened.This schema shows how people recognize the occurrence of events in real world as language by processing and mapping.The research results have shown some implications to the cognitive mode of language.This study is expected to provide new insight and references for further research on this topic and related issues.