A Study On The Subjectivity In Because-clause

Because-clause is a grammatical structure with multiple meaning. The different sorts of meaning it conveys may exist in varied syntactic structures, semantic relations or pragmatic context. Scholars have approached it from the perspective of logic-semantic, functional pragmatic and cognitive linguistic which contributes to the description of the construction of because-clause, yet neglected uncover the cognitive motivation behind the employment of the because-clause. This thesis proposes cognitive analytical models to explore the motivation of the formation and development of the syntactic structures of because-clause.Contrasting to objectivity, subjectivity in this thesis is termed as concerning the expression of self and the representation of other's perspective or point of view. The new analyzing model is rooted in the cognitive perspective and takes linguistic, semantic and language users'mental factors into consideration. These factors jointly work together to lead to a conclusion. In turn, the changes of conceptual structures provoked by the conscious or unconscious factor are faithfully reflected in the linguistic representations. In this concern, this thesis is of theoretical and practical significance. By focusing on the relationship between linguistic and conceptual representations, the study is also helpful to language learners in guiding them in the employment of because-clause construction in different types of context.This thesis consists of five parts: Chapter One is a brief introduction of the study, which includes the motivation of the study, the necessity of the study, the aims and significance of the study, the methodology adopted for the present study, as well as the organization of the thesis. Chapter Two reviews the previous researches of because-clause from the perspective of logic-semantics, functional-pragmatics and cognitive approach, then a brief evaluation is presented. Chapter Three introduces the related term and put forward the analytical model. Chapter Four conducts a thorough analysis and scale the because-clause based on the subjectivity hierarchy. Chapter Five is the conclusion part. It generalizes the major findings and limitations of the current study and gives some suggestions for future research.