Contrastive Study Of English And Chinese Word Order From The Perspective Of Figure-Ground Theory

Cognitive linguistics is the synthesis of linguistics and cognitive science. It takes experiential realism as its philosophical basis, emphasizes the influence of experience on cognition and language and studies how the cognitive structures and their rules derived from experience influence language. As a new approach, cognitive linguistics is the study of language on the basis of our experience of the world and the way we perceive and conceptualize it, which offers us a new model to review and understand language.Figure-ground theory reflects the relationship between language and cognition. Figure is the prominent part in cognition and the focus of attention while ground is less prominent than figure and can be regarded as the cognitive reference. In English expression, figure is usually put on the prominent position.This dissertation points out the similarities and differences between English and Chinese word order by comparing English and Chinese sentences from The Moonstone written by Wilkie Collins. It delves into their cognitive differences through cognition pattern. English adopts cognitive model from figure to ground, while Chinese takes the order from ground to figure. According to the analysis of the dissertation, a conclusion is made that the difference between English and Chinese word order lies in different cognitive models.