A Cognitive Pragmatic Study Of Modern Chinese Copying Topic-comment Constructions

There are abundant language copy phenomena in the Chinese copying topic-comment constructions,which include tautology(such as”???,??……”),verb copying sentence(such as“?????”),contracted sentence(such as“????”)and so on.These structures are quite common in the field of Chinese studies.However,due to their wide range of coverage and obvious differences between structures,previous studies always focus on the micro analysis of a specific structure,and lack of overall attention to Chinese language copy phenomenon.Therefore,the research lacks of exploration of internal commonness of different structures.It is difficult to break the research barrier of Chinese language copy phenomenon.Is there any substantial commonness behind the formal commonness of copying structures?What structures can be included in the category of copying topic-comment constructions?What are the typical features of them in terms of form and function?These problems are worth exploring.This thesis takes the Chinese copying topic-comment constructions as the research objects from the perspective of cognitive and pragmatic research.Based on Iconicity Theory,Prototype Theory and Markedness Theory,the thesis adopts the method of qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis.We have made a classification,formal description and functional analysis of all kinds of copying structures in the self built corpus,and explored the typical features of copying topic-comment constructions category at the formal and.functional levels.The main work and conclusions are as follows:1.This thesis proves that Chinese copying topic-comment constructions constitute an open category,which consists of many types of copying structures.Specifically:(1)As far as the structural nature is concerned,the copying topic-comment construction is a syntactic copy phenomenon.The semantic relevance between the topic and the comment part is high and the continuity is strong,and the homograph part is the core of semantic expression,which is different from pragmatic copying,rhetorical reuse and topic anaphora.(2)As far as the structural elements and relations are concerned,the topic part has diversity in grammatical units(including words,phrases and clauses),part of speech composition(including substantive component or predicative component),referential(including definite,indefinite and non referential),and information features(including known information and unknown information).Due to the different copying degree of the topic(completed copy or incompleted copy),the relationship between the topic and the comment is also different.(3)As far as the structural position is concerned,the structural units of copying topic-comment constructions vary in size(they can be within a single sentence or between clauses),and the position of topic in expression can be divided into primary and secondary(they can be in the position of "main topic" or"sub topic").2.Based on the New Markedness Theory,this research finds that there is a continuum with prototype structures group as the core in the category of Chinese copying topic-comment constructions.From the perspective of member categories,copying topic-comment constructions are distributed in 34 formats,such as "X? X","X ? X","X ? X",etc.They can be integrated into 8 categories of three structural groups:prototype structures group(including iconicity structures and contraction structures),variant structures group(including extension structures,loose structures and restriction structures),and adjacent structures group(including arbitrary structures,solidified structures and copy-type right-location sentences).From the perspective of membership,this research has determined the position of category members according to the six criteria of combination,aggregation,distribution,frequency,meaning and duration.Prototype structures group is the core of category continuum,variant structures group is the second,and adjacent structures group is in the edge of category.3.This thesis discusses the typical features of Chinese copying topic-comment constructions category in surface form and deep function.(1)In the aspect of surface form,this thesis makes statistics on the distribution frequency of formal features according to the 7 feature bundle standards of topic,comment and their relationship.The results show that "predicative","non referential","known information" and "pause or modal particle" are the high-frequency features of the topic part,the "weak continuity" of the topic and the "predicative components" of the copying part in the comment are the high-frequency features of the comment,and the "closeness" is the high-frequency feature of the relationship between the topic and comment.(2)In terms of pragmatic functions,this thesis discusses the "negative" function of copying topic-comment constructions category.According to the "size of negative quantity field",the functional characteristics of the structures are divided into eight categories,and according to the "difference of negative strength",four levels of structural functional strength are divided.The results show that "positive and negative co expression" is the typical function of Chinese copying topic-comment constructions.The function of "strong negative and weak positive" proves that there is a genetic relationship between prototype structures group and variant structures group,while the function of "weak negative and strong positive" is the distinguishing feature between copying topic-comment constructions and general topic-comment constructions.(3)In terms of the relationship between form and function,this thesis screens out six indicators as independent variables,and uses the method of multinomial Logistic regression to discuss the influence of structural category and surface form on negative function(dependent variable).The results show that:structural categories and formal features can jointly predict "negative functional intensity",among which,prototype structures group,variant structures group,topic as "predicate component",after topic"can not add or should not add pause or modal particle",and topic as "known information" have a significant impact on "negative functional intensity".The category of copying topic-comment constructions constitutes unmarked matching in form and function.4.This thesis analyzes the speech interaction function of Chinese copying topic-comment constructions and further explains its colloquial features.From the perspective of the speaker,subjective expression is the essential feature of the structures.The subjectivity of the structures is mainly affected by the code form(including"discourse unit size" and "format freedom")and structural function(including"subjective perspective","subjective affect" and "subjective epistemic modality").From the perspective of interaction,these structures convey the message of "Politeness".This thesis expounds 11 politeness strategies of copying topic-comment constructions,summarizes the responsive,stylized and categorical features of the structures,and probes into the social and psychological motivation of the structures in speech interaction.To sum up,there are many kinds of copying phenomena in the category of Chinese copying topic-comment constructions.There is a continuum from the formal level to the functional level.The surface copy phenomenon corresponds to a certain degree of"negative" function behind the discourse,which highlights the commonness within the category.This thesis makes a cognitive pragmatic analysis of Chinese language copy phenomenon from the perspective of topic-comment constructions,which may be a new attempt to explore the essential characteristics of Chinese language.This process may help to broaden the horizon of the study of Chinese language copy phenomenon,and feed back the upper level research to solve some disputes in "topic" research.