A Cognitive Account Of Tautology

Tautology is a common phenomenon in many languages. The basic form is such:NP BE NP, i.e. the subject and the object of this construction is the same nominal phrase.This construction kindles interests from philosophers to linguists. Scholars make their efforts to study this construction from different perspectives, which deepen the comprehension of this unique phenomenon.Wittgenstein holds that tautology is a kind of analytic proposition, which is unconditionally true. Therefore, it’says nothing’of the world.Linguists study this construction mainly from the perspectives of pragmatics, semantics and cognitive linguistics. Methodologically, these studies are carried out, consciously or unconsciously, in accordance with reductionism, the way that in order to study the whole object, one has to divide the object of research into its components, and study their components respectively and separately. Scholars pay little attention to the impact of the whole structure exerting on its components.Regrettably, few scholars pay adequate attention to the aspects of the fact that this construction is a perfect window which reveals the quintessence of language, the traits of subjectivity of language. Language does not reflect the world alone; it involves the expression of speakers’attitudes, emotions and evaluation.This thesis analyses the syntactic distribution and the motivation of this distribution of the NP in tautology. Furthermore, it is discussed in the thesis that the generation of the meaning of this construction is under the pressure of the meaning as a whole and function conceptual metonymy.