The Semantic Primitives of yǒu in Chinese: The Source and Properties of EXISTENCE and POSSESSION

From the perspectives of etymology, syntax, semantics and cognition, this paper studies the yǒu expressions based on the semantic primitives of EXISTENCE and its derived meaning POSSESSION in Chinese. It draws the conclusion that the emergence of the meaning of EXISTENCE is earlier than that of the meaning of POSSESSION and the semantic primitive of yǒu is EXISTENCE rather than POSSESSION. Through the investigations of the conceptual meaning of yǒu and the possessive sentences marked by it, it is concluded that the POSSESSION meaning is the result of the subcategorization of the semantic primitive of EXISTENCE and the configuration of experience and culture, and hence a subjective manifestation of human self-centered cognition. Yǒu possessive sentences in Chinese have some remarkable features which come from their existential roots. EXISTENCE as the semantic primitive of yǒu can be used to explain related phenomena both economically and in a more convincing way.