Analysis Of Garden Path Phenomenon Based On Langacker's Construal Theory

The human comprehension of language involves in extremely complicated process. The research history of language comprehension can be traced back to the Plato's time. Up to now, a great many theories and views are developed to describe how human brains process the language or in what way the human sentence parsing mechanism is employed in the language processing. It has proved useful to investigate this problem by studying the garden path sentences, structures contain temporary syntactic ambiguity.Since 1970s, linguistic researchers of different schools have proposed their own approaches of analysis for this particular and interesting language phenomenon, with research focus varied. The researchers in psycholinguistics attempted to formulate human parsing strategies in terms of grammar perceptual-independent mechanism, which is known as attachment strategies. Studies based on grammatical analysis intended to solve the occurrence of garden path phenomenon by detecting its violations of fixed grammar rules. This thesis attempts to make a cognitive analysis of the particular and interesting language phenomenon by adopting the Langacker's Construal Theory through a cognitive perspective by means of comparison, theoretical analysis or specific cases analysis of garden path phenomenon and figuration in order to discover the cognitive mechanism hidden behind the phenomenon. The following are several puzzles intended to be solved: 1why are people easily led down the garden path in such kind of sentences? 2What is the real cause of garden path phenomenon? 3 What cognitive mechanism is hidden behind the phenomenon? 4 How can we avoid the negative garden path effect? 5 How is the positive garden path effect effectively used? Here are the main ideas and my mode for analysis:Garden path sentences should be defined as sentences with temporary syntactic ambiguity or local ambiguity rather than truly ambiguous sentences. Both psycholinguistic account of the phenomenon and a grammar-based account of it ignore the readers'subjective tendency and the semantic element. The Construal Theory from the cognitive grammar emphasizes the subjective process of construal and holds the view that the center of the language is semantics, thus the grammar structures are affected by the cognitive modesPeople can construe a conceived situation in alternate ways—by means of alternative image—for purpose of thoughts and expressions. Different images of the same situation may differ as to the varied selection of explicit attention, the relative salience, different supposition and expectation, or the perspective from which it is viewed, and so on. And vice versa, different grammatical structures can form different images in the reader's brain and differ semantically, leading to different comprehension. To judge a sentence is grammatical or ungrammatical does not rely on certain general syntactic rules but it is to be expected that the felicity of a sentence is affected by the degree of compatibility with the conventional image embodied in the sentence.Through the analysis of specific examples we have found that the construal process of the garden path phenomenon observes a cognitive sequence. Readers tend to firstly extract the prototypical pattern of expression at the core, only when the initial understanding of it suffers from a breakdown, is the periphery pattern of expression activated. This cognitive sequence coincides with cognitive economy, which I will call cognitive preference. Thus, we can see that, when readers follow the cognitive preference and construe the conceived scene given by a garden path sentence in a conventional way, they are easily led down the garden path. In re-analysis of the sentence, cognitive preference is violated, and then periphery expression pattern is activated. Furthermore, through re-confirmation of supposition and expectation implied in the sentence, the perspective from which the scene is viewed and trajector-landmark asymmetry in the predication, the subject, the predicate and the object of the sentence are determined, and the meaning conveyed is highlighted. The violation of the cognitive preference and devotion of more cognitive effort in the reanalysis result in garden path phenomenon. Garden path phenomenon is in fact an outcome triggered by the Construal Theory and cognitive preference, which is the cognitive mechanism hidden behind the phenomenon—a universal law in human understanding of languageGarden path phenomenon will produce both positive and negative garden path effect. Garden path phenomenon created unconsciously causes a negative effect, leading to complicated comprehension process. Due to the obstruction in comprehension, readers have to go through backtracking and re-decoding, which extend the time spent on locally ambiguous parts. The result is then a slow reading speed. It seems a practical method to change the unconventional grammatical structures back into a conventional one which conforms to the Construal Theory and cognitive preference, by adding certain words or a necessary punctuation. But if we consciously apply the cognitive mechanisms mentioned above to trigger the garden path effect in a given context, a special pragmatic effect (humor effect) will be achieved. The readers will be deliberately attempted to take an inaccessible garden path and have to return to choose a right way out. From a failure in prediction to an unexpected result, there will produce a strong contradiction between false and truth, which leads to a positive effect of a humor, suspense, sudden shift, stimulation. This positive effect can be found in various aspects of the language application. It plays a significant role in such respects as humorous stories, jokes, riddles, artistic performance, commercial publicity, and literature narration.Analysis made based on The Construal Theory from cognitive grammar, combining with the advantage of psychology and cognitive science and pragmatics, not only puts forward new views, but also provides a new perspective to the mechanism of human language understanding. The discoveries made by linguistic researchers in cognitive linguistics will show us a bright future of a fruitful and promising interdisciplinary exchange between cognitive theory, cognitive mechanisms, literary theory and Artificial Intelligence.