Cognitive Motivation for Unaccusative Verbs with Objects in Existential Construction in Chinese

Abstract

This study applies conceptual blending and grammatical blending to analyze the meaning and structure construction of the NP1+Vi+NP2 construction in existential construction in Chinese. We found that the NP1+Vi+NP2 construction in existential 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. By discussing process of semantic construction and syntactic realization, we derive that the structure of existential sentences is integrated by the input spaces of "the existing object exists (or lies on some status)" and "somewhere exists something". It can concludes that the emergent meaning is "somewhere exists the existing object lying on some status" through analyzing the blending characters. This proves that conceptual integration and grammatical blending theories are animate and have mighty explanatory power in this specific linguistic phenomenon.