A Study Of English Existential Sentences:Construction Grammar Perspective

As a common language phenomenon and special sentence pattern, English existential sentences have been one of subjects of linguistic research at home and at abroad. In the linguistic field, scholars and linguists have different viewpoints for English existential sentences. Generative grammar is one of the most influenced theories. However, there exist some problems unsolved. It can not give a reasonable explanation on the nature of English existential sentences. Therefore, the thesis makes a study to the nature of English existential sentences from the new perspective of Construction Grammar.The theory of Construction Grammar states that the basic unit of language is the pairing of form and sense——construction. As a whole, construction is more than the sum of its parts, and is independent on components of syntactic characteristics and semantic characteristics. The meaning of any sentence can not be inferred from components or other sentence patterns. Therefore, the thesis firstly proves the constructional status of English existential sentences, and establishes the constructional structure of English existential sentences. Secondly, the thesis mainly explores the relationship between verbs and English existential construction, especially in the fusion of participant roles of verbs and argument roles of construction. Meanwhile, the thesis also analyzes the semantic constraints of postverbal NPs. With the aid of corpus, it states that postverbal NPs can be definite and indefinite components in English existential construction. However, the possibility of definite NP may be minimal, which is correspondence to the definiteness restriction. At last, it also make an analysis of the relationship between English existential construction and other constructions. Analysis shows that the closer the relation between other constructions and English existential construction is, the more evident sense of existence constructions express and the more similar structures they have.The theory of Construction Grammar on English existential sentence provides a new perspective of linguistic fields, and widens a broader space. What’s more, Construction Grammar also attributes people to understand further the features of English existential sentences, and lays the theoretical foundation. Therefore, study shows that English existential construction should be a member of well-studied constructions.