The quantity feature of verbs and the emergent meaning of the "zai (在) + location" construction

Previous studies on the constructions of "zai + location + verb" and "verb + zai + location" focused on the semantic function and the grammatical meaning of "zai + location", and paid less attention to the meaning of the whole construction and the properties of events, which play a significant role in the formation and selection of a construction. From the view of mental scanning, this paper tries to demonstrate that the above two constructions root in different construal manners, which reflect different cognitive approaches. The selection of syntactic positions of "zai + location" is the result of the mental "focus" and the "prominence" of conceptual description. On the other hand, different constructions have different construal effects, map different conceptual contents and produce different emergent meanings.