On Grammaticalization Of The English Demonstrative THAT

THAT is one of the most basic and the most active words in English. Appearing in oral speech and various written styles repetitively, THAT plays an important role in people's exchange of thoughts. Therefore, it is the studying object of linguists home and abroad. Linguists always used the synchronic approach and analyzed it from the pragmatic and discourse points of view. This thesis uses the grammaticalization theory in cognitive linguistics to study, both synchronically and diachronically, the grammaticalization pathways, the cognitive mechanisms and the principles involved in the grammaticalization of THAT. It is to analyze the present linguistic phenomena from the diachronic point of view and study the relationship between linguistic forms and human's cognitionIt is claimed that, semantically, the demonstrative THAT implies distance from the deictic center and its referents can be persons, things, ideas, time, actions, events, discourses and so on. And it occurs in two syntactic contexts: (1) it is used as an independent demonstrative pronoun; and (2) it is used together with a cooccurring noun (phrase). This thesis also distinguishes four different pragmatic uses of THAT: (1) exophoric; (2) anaphoric; (3) discourse deictic; and (4) recognitional uses.What's more important, this thesis makes a detailed diachronic study of the grammaticalization of THAT and it proves that the grammaticalization routes of the English demonstrative THAT, from a syntactic point of view, are as follows:...