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A Corpus-based Study On The There Construction

Posted on:2017-02-22Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:B LiFull Text:PDF
GTID:2295330503483290Subject:English Language and Literature
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The there construction, as a very important and widely used construction in English has aroused extensive concern of the scholars in the research field. Previous studies predominantly concentrate on the synchronic perspective. Literatures show that disputed problems about the there construction focus on such issues as its subject, non-concord in the construction, the definiteness effect of NP after VP, its classification and its formation. But few studies probe into the development of the there construction from a diachronic perspective, except for some studies on its grammaticalization.This thesis devotes to investigating the change and development of the there construction with the apparatus of the theory of Constructional Change and Constructionalization(Traugott & Trousdale, 2013) within the framework of Diachronic Construction Grammar. Constructionalization refers to the creation of new form-meaning pairing while those not leading to a new form-meaning pairing due to no change of both form and meaning at the same time, are regarded as Constructional Change. Constructional Change and Constructionalization make up grammticalization on its approach, directionality and degree of directionality. On this basis, both synchronic and diachronic analysis, and description and explanation are adopted, and COCA(Corpus of Contemporary American English) and GBCA(Google Book Corpus) are used as the data source for statistical analysis. This thesis brings to bear empirical evidence concerning the following three questions:1. What are the syntactic and semantic features of the existential there construction and the deictic there construction?2. What is the relation between the existential there construction and the deictic there construction?3. What processes and mechanisms are involved in the form and meaning change of the there construction?The major findings in this thesis are presented as follows:(1) According to COCA, the existential there construction and the deictic there construction show distinctions in both their syntactic and semantic features. Judging from syntactic form, the major distinction is reflected in the definiteness of NP. In detail, when a noun in one there construction has the definitive qualifier in front of it such as definite article(e.g. the), demonstrative determiner(e.g. this), possessive determiner(e.g. my), the there construction belongs to the deictic there construction, otherwise it goes to the existential there construction. From the perspective of its semantic meanings, the existential there construction denotes the existence or occurrence of an event while the deictic there construction is used to pick out a location of an event that has already been existed or occurred. Besides, on semantic types of VP, the existential there construction has much more than the deictic there construction.(2) According to the analysis of the corpus data and former studies, the existential there Construction and the deictic there Construction proposed by Lakoff(1987) have different meanings but also have different syntactic forms. In other words, they should be regarded as two independent constructions rather than two different meanings of the there construction. According to GBCA, the existential there Construction occurs with intensive tokens in 1580 s while the deictic there Construction occurs in 1590 s but intensively shows up in 1640 s. Thus, this evidence, to some extent, supports another conclusion: the deictic there construction grows out of the existential there construction.(3) The changing process of the there construction starts from the existential there construction and expands to the deictic there construction. The major mechanism involved in the process of constructionalization are both syntactic and semantic “Neoanalysis”, and “Analogization”.These findings attempt to illustrate the diachronic development and change of the there construction objectively and diachronic study of the change of the there construction strongly demonstrates the merits of constructional change and constructionalization theory. This thesis might benefit the further academic study, teaching and acquisition of the there construction.
Keywords/Search Tags:the there construction, diachronic construction grammar, constructional change, constructionalization
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