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Abstract Abstract: In this study, cognitive linguistics theories of Construction Grammar and Image Schema are applied to examine the cognitive mechanism, meaning, and syntactic classification of the “TEARU Construction” in Japanese. It is found that （1）“TEARU Construction”consists of three modules: NP1二/ハ，NP2ガ/ヲ，andＶテアル，all cognitive strategies for expressing existence of things/events involved with human agency, formed and motivated by the grammatical convention.（2）The strong coercion of the construction weakens the dynamic meaning of the verb inＶテアル and strengthens the followingアル, integrating dynamics and statics in the existential meaning.（3）Due to the features of NP1 and NP2 and the existential meaning of the construction, we propose that syntactically two types of sentence patterns, “THING-Existential sentence (モノ)”and “EVENT-Existential sentence (コト)”can be classified. The former is a description of the human agency involved existence of things, while the latter is a narrative about the human agency involved existence of the events.
Key words: TEARU construction; grammaticalization; human agency; THING-Existential sentence; EVENT-Existential sentence
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