Study On Chinese Topic Structure From Cognition-Based Semantic Approach

This thesis is a new attempt to study the Chinese Topic - Comment structure . Needless to say , this linguistic topic has drawn much attention at home and abroad in the last few decades , and in my paper I'm trying to analyze it from a cognitive semantic approach , a relative different way , with the purpose to prove that the Chinese Topic structure is better to be regarded as a concept of semantic field through theories and examples . Several properties of TC structure in this aspect have been identified , which will offer some new explanations for a few suspending arguments . This perspective differentiates itself from former studies based on transformational generative grammar , because in some ways the traditional method hasn't given us perfect explanations to all the characteristics of this structure , at least it cannot sum up all the properties of Chinese Topic structure , since it puts all its focus on the structure's syntactic features of the structure , while this categorizing way is still open to question .Li and Thompson (1976) , Csao (1977) , Xu and Liu (1998) all brought forward their own generalizations of properties of Topic structure , which are the three typical groups of arguments by linguists , from which we can find out the changes of opinion on this special linguistic topic undergone these years . Among these changes , I found a distinct one is that linguists have gradually realized the deficiency of the traditional perspective , which puts the Topic -Comment structure at an equal status with subject - predicate structure and study it purely in the domain of syntax , while the former one has no syntactic function of its own and the two kinds of structures are not conceptions out of the same linguistic domain at all.To prove this hypothesis , after the comparative analyses of the two structures , the second chapter sums up the relationship between Topic and Comment . The author finds that the key is the relevance of meaning , indicating the feasibility of analyzing the subject in semantic domain . We cangain support from theories of functional and cognitive , as well as some formal linguists .In the third chapter I'll introduce an important cognitive semantic conception into the thesis : the famous Iconicity hypothesis . To begin with , this chapter points out that Chinese Topic - Comment structure is a kind of important sentence structure organized in sequential order , which reflects the streams of consciousness of people's minds . It has often been observed that Chinese speakers use topic - comment structure because they tend to first present the main issue they want to talk about and then organize their thoughts into a sentence to elaborate on the issue . This phenomenon happens to be the research target of Iconicity , whose core sense is that the superficial structural sequence corresponds to its deeper conceptual sequence . I'll use some examples to prove that Chinese TC owns at least three properties according with this hypothesis that are : 1. Topic structure is an information structure . Comment ( new information ) is more indispensable than Topic ( old information ) . 2. Topic carries less semantic weight than Comment . 3. Topic structure reflects the governing scope of semantic domain . And then in the last part of this chapter we'll see some suspending disputes about Topic structure being explained in terms of these properties .In the conclusion part , except for laying out some difficulties I encountered during the preparing work , and some doubts I still bear in mind after finishing the thesis , I will also present my own opinion on possible directions for further research on Chinese Topic structure . I hope this thesis will help linguistic students have a better understanding on this special study area , as well as the specialty of Chinese. In addition , the cognitive semantic approach can afford an alternative approach to the study of language structure in each language's own terms .