Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Preliminary Remarks
English Existential Sentences, especially There-be construction has been a hotissue in linguistics as a relatively complex grammatical phenomenon. Thosediscussions are mainly about the roles and functions of the word there, the choices ofpredicate verbs like be verbs and others. However, in the Cognitive-grammaticalanalysis of English Existential sentences, the studies of There-be construction are theresults of cognitive mechanism and generation according to the grammatical,semantic as well as morphological properties, which are often displayed as lexicalitems. Specifically speaking, There-be construction is distinguished from otherEnglish Existential sentences mainly in cognitive and grammatical properties oflexical items. (Langacker,2017).There-be construction is an existential sentence model, which emerges as anatural linguistic phenomenon with the language development. This kind ofconstruction happens in almost all of languages, so it has been a hot discussionamong linguistic scholars. Historically, Descriptive Grammar, Generative Grammarand Functional Grammar ever made further research on it. Due to their own relativeshortcomings on the study of There-be construction, the newly emerging CognitiveGrammar becomes a good method to make up those disadvantages. This chapter willanalyze the formation, development and meaning expansion or generation ofThere-be construction by means of Iconicity principles, the theory ofGrammaticalization and Prototype theory in the framework of Cognitive Linguistics
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1.2 Study Methodology
This thesis make discussions on There-be construction so as to find theirunderlying cognitive motivations and mechanism to the generation and development.In reality, all linguistic sentential constructions are multi-leveled. This thesis analyzeThere-be construction from the Cognitive-grammatical aspect. By combining thetheoretical studies( iconicity, grammaticalization and so on) of There-be constructionwith its real-world uses practically, we try to dig out the cognitive workingmechanisms of There-be construction, enriching the implications of CognitiveLinguistics and adding up the whole comprehension about how There-beconstruction processes and operates. Research methods of Qualitative Analysis andCase Studies are mainly adopted in this thesis.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 A Brief Introduction to There-be Construction
English existential sentences are conceived of a ubiquitous phenomenonoccurring in almost all the world languages (Frezz,1992). As a conspicuouslygrammatical phenomenon, English existential sentences, especially There-beConstruction has been a hot issue among linguistic studies. Owing to its perplexingfeatures, such as definiteness of the post-verbal NP, the unattractive and intransitiveof the verb, the semantic and adverbial restriction, the disagreement of NP-be and soon, There-be Construction has greatly attracted many linguists(Bolinger,1977;Milsark, 1977; Breivik, 1983; Quirk, 1985; Hannay, 1985; Shen Jiaxuan, 2017;Zhang Keding, 2017; Gao Wenchen, 2017,2017; Zhang Qing,2017; Zhang Qu,2017). Existential sentences describes of “a particular type of sentence structure whichoften express the existence or location of person，英语论文网站，英语论文题目
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