A Study Of Pivotal Sentences From The Perspective Of Action Chain

Chinese pivotal sentence is a special language phenomenon,whose sentence structure and semantic structure has its own particularities,and it has become a focus of concern in recent years.For decades,scholars have studied pivotal sentences from a variety of angles,and they mainly studied it from the theory of syntax,semantics and pragmatics.There is no doubt that their studies let us have a deeper understanding about pivotal sentences.However,a few people study the deep root of generation of the pivotal sentences.The development of cognitive linguistics provides a new perspective for the study of pivotal sentences.Cognitive linguistics holds the view that language is not only from an objective world or just a simple grammatical phenomena.The formation of language is governed by a lot of factors,including the external physical world,physiological and perceptual abilities of human beings as well as people's cognitive structure etc..So we cannot be separated from the objective material world and human beings' cognitive abilities in order to better analyze language phenomenon.Although some scholars have analyzed the formation of pivotal sentences from the cognitive perspective,and they also hold different opinions on pivotal sentences' naming,definition,scope and classification.Of course,their conclusions of studies also provide us with better literature references for the following study on pivotal sentences.Previous studies place stress on the type of“???”(causative sentences)under the cognitive perspective,and scholars analyze semantic structures of the type of“???”(causative sentences)from the angle of causative force.However,according to different meanings of the first verbs in pivotal sentences,some scholars divide them into different groups,such as five types of pivotal sentences which are analyzed in this thesis,and the type of“???”(causative sentences)just is one of kinds of pivotal sentences.While previous studies did not involve the analysis of the motivation of other types of pivotal sentences' semantic structures generation from the perspective of cognition.Therefore,in this paper,the author tries to discuss the cognitive basis of five types of pivotal sentences based on the action chain of energy transmission theory which proposed by Langacker in cognitive linguistics.Through these analyses,we find that there are some similarities and differences during the formation of five types of pivotal sentences.Similarities are embodied in the following two aspects.First of all,during the processes of action chains in five types of pivotal sentences,there are a plurality of participants and two verbs involved in the whole action chains,and different participants emit force through different verbs in action chains,which form different energy transmissions.While the process of energy transmission is the process of formation of semantic structure of a sentence.Therefore,action chains of five kinds of pivotal sentences can be analyzed by different processes of energy transmissions that are formed by two verbs in sentences.That is to say,five types of pivotal sentences can be interpreted as two clauses'semantic structures which are guided by two verbs.Secondly,concurrent components of five types of pivotal sentences serve as the agent and patient at the same time during energy transmissions of action chains,and they also act as the subject and object of sentences at the same time in grammar.The double grammatical components and semantic roles of concurrent components like a bridge that links the twice energy transmissions as a whole action chain,which means concurrent components connect semantic structures of two parts as a complete semantic chain.Thus,concurrent components of five types of pivotal sentences play the key role during their action chains,and the double grammatical components and semantic roles of concurrent components are the key to forming pivotal sentences.The difference is mainly reflected in cognitive bases of formation of five kinds of pivotal sentences.During the process of forming five kinds of pivotal sentences,according to different nature of the first verbs in pivotal sentences,the agent emit force with different nature,forming action chains with different features,which means different semantic chains are formed,and thus,different types of pivotal sentences are formed.In this paper,during action chains of five types of pivotal sentences,the agent emit force through the first verb involving physical force,extensive force,verbal force and psychological force.And according to different features of force involved in action chains,the five types of pivotal sentences can be inducted as pivotal sentences of physical force,pivotal sentences of extensive force,pivotal sentences of verbal force and pivotal sentences of psychological force respectively.Compared with the previous classifications,this classification can intuitively reflect the cognitive basis of the formation of pivotal sentences.