A Study Of Unarticulated Constituent From The Perspective Of Relevance-adaptation Theory

Unarticulated constituent(UC for short)is a very interesting phenomenon,which exists pervasively in our daily communication.It was first found by John Perry in 1986 when he discussed sentences like It’s raining.Since UC was put forward,many scholars home and abroad have paid much attention to UC,especially some foreign scholars.However,they mainly focus on both the existence of UC and to which linguistic branch it belongs.However,until now,few specific conclusions are made to explain the production and interpretation of UC.The present research aims to use the R-A Theory to deal with UC and build a new model to analyze UC based on the previous studies.Centering on three communicative contexts of Adaptation Theory(AT for short),the physical world,the social world and the mental world,the present research will make a study of unarticulated constituent.As a linguistic phenomenon,the unarticulated constituent is not only the result of linguistic choice,but also the result of linguistic adaptation.In order to achieve communicative goals,utterers can make some assumptions based on the principle of relevance and contextual factors,then adapt to different context and make some choices on the basis of the principle of least effort.At the meantime,interpreters will make some assumptions in terms of the principle of relevance and cognitive context,then select their assumptions based on different contexts for achieving the optimal relevance.Considering the physical world,the social world and the mental world of interlocutors,the present research will analyze UC in the specific context from the perspective of utterance production and interpretation.Some conclusions are drawn by analyzing UC according to the improved R-A Model.Firstly,the choice of UC under the framework of R-A Theory is a continuous dynamic process of making linguistic choices.Secondly,the choice of UC in terms of R-A Theory is affected by context(linguistic context and non-linguistic context),especially cognitive context.Thirdly,both utterer and interpreter should be taken into consideration when we interpret UC under the framework of R-A Theory,including their cognitive factors,mental factors,social factors and so on.