A Study Of Wh-questions From Cognitive Perspective

This paper offers a tentative analysis on the corresponding relationship between form and meaning of wh-questions within theoretical framework of belief and doubt hypothesis and communicative intention. In other words, this paper aims to make a reasonable and persuasive explanation to these questions: Why and how does a specific grammatical form, namely, wh-interrogative, correspond to a variety of meanings? What is the motivation of the correspondence?Many predecessors home and abroad have made great contribution to the study of wh-questions. Their researches on wh-questions mainly concentrate on classification, syntactic structure,semantic and pragmatic functions. Based on their inspiring and instructive researches, the author attempts to explore the corresponding relationship between form and meaning of wh-questions. On the basis of the classification made by scholars from different perspectives, the author reclassifies wh-questions into two subtypes: regular wh-questions and irregular wh-questions. Irregular wh-questions are further divided into two subtypes: wh-in-situ questions and fragmentary wh-questions.In this study, BDH put forward by Niu Baoyi (2003) and theories concerning communicative intention are adopted. According to BDH, belief and doubt are two main aspects of speaker's epistemological state concerning interrogatives. As a result of the interaction between belief and doubt, speaker's doubt will become stronger when belief becomes weaker, and vice versa. In a wh-question, a speaker's doubt is, namely, unknown information represented by wh-element. The speaker's belief is the presupposition of the question. Meanwhile, according to Searle (1983) and Grice (1957), a speaker produces an utterance with some specific communicative intention. In line with the point of view above, the speaker uses wh-questions with the intention of seeking information, inquiring confirmation, doing invitation, suggestion, or expressing feelings of surprise, anger, etc. Accordingly, employment of wh-interrogatives is involved in the speaker's communicative intention and the speaker's epistemological state as well.Based on the discussions above, the author attempts a hypothesis: In wh-questions, a speaker's communicative intention corresponds to the epistemological state. When a speaker intends to seek information from a hearer, the speaker's doubt is higher than belief. Wh-interrogatives are used with the intention of conveying a speaker's doubt. When a speaker intends to convey his or her own opinions or feelings to a hearer, his or her belief is higher than doubt. Wh-interrogatives are used with the intention of doing invitation, suggestion or expressing feeling of surprise, anger, etc.The thesis is composed of six chapters.In chapter one, the main concern of the present study is briefly introduced. First of all, a brief review of wh-questions has been taken. Next, necessity of the study is illustrated. Last, scope and methodology of the study are introduced.Chapter two is a literature review. The author generally reviews the previous researches of interrogatives, especially wh-questions, which is the main concern of the present study.In chapter three, the theoretical framework is established. The author provides a specific introduction to the theories adopted for building the framework, and describes the framework in detail. According to the material collected by the author, two main communicative intentions concerning wh-questions are intention of seeking information from a hearer and intention of conveying a speaker's own opinions or feelings to a hearer. The hypothesis of this study is presented at the end of this chapter.In chapter four, first, the author describes the syntactic features of wh-questions. The distinct properties of wh-questions are wh-word fronting and operator inversion. The author, for the sake of clear illustration in the following chapters, reclassifies wh-questions into two subtypes: regular wh-questions and irregular wh-questions. Irregular wh-questions are further divided into two subtypes: wh-in-situ questions and fragmentary wh-questions. Second, the author makes detailed analysis of speakers'epistemological state related to wh-questions based on the author's classification. Third, communicative intentions of speakers in the use of wh-questions are discussed.In chapter five, the author analyzes the corresponding relationship between form and meaning of wh-questions. It is found that a speaker utters wh-questions with various communicative intentions. Both speakers'communicative intention and epistemological state play very important roles in the use of wh-questions.Chapter six, after detailed discussion and theoretical analysis, comes to the conclusions that the speaker's epistemological state and communicative intention offer a motivation of the correspondence of wh-questions; that the speaker's communicative intention plays a dominating role in the correspondence between form and meaning of wh-questions.