On The Conceptual Blending Of The Verb+Locative Object Construction In Mandarin Chinese

As an important type of object, locative objects in modern Mandarin Chinese are less frequently used than patient objects and objective objects. Verb+locative object construction (VLOC) in modern Mandarin Chinese refers to the construction that consists of a verb followed by a locative object. VLOC has become the heated topic in the academic circle because of its economy. However, there is still great controversy on the classification and formation mechanism of this construction.Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT) proposed by Fauconnier in the1990s is based on Mental Space Theory and Conceptual Metaphor Theory. As a theoretic framework for on-line meaning construction and information, CBT has great explanatory power. Therefore, this thesis applies CBT to studying the blending process of VLOC, revealing its emergent meaning, explaining why the features of verbs and locative objects have changed and pointing out the pragmatic motivation for its formation.From the perspective of CBT, the blending process of VLOC is as follows. The two input spaces in VLOC are grammatical structure space and conceptual structure space. The cross-space mapping between the two spaces is schema mapping. V in the grammatical structure space corresponds to the specific verb in the conceptual structure space and NP in the grammatical structure space is the counterpart of locative object. After the cognitive operations of composition, completion and elaboration, an emergent structure is formed in the blend, which is VLOC. The emergent meaning of the construction entails that the agent purposefully chooses the place where the action takes place or the place that is related to the action.This thesis holds that it is the emergent meaning that causes the feature changes of verbs and locative objects in VLOC. Features that are related to the emergent meaning are preserved, while those that are irrelevant to the emergent meaning are removed or constrained. There are two pragmatic motivations for the formation of VLOC. One is that locative objects request cognitive prominence and the other one is that people pursue economy in communication.This thesis not only provides an explanation of the blending process of VLOC but also further proves the explanatory power of CBT.