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VP And Its Fronting

Posted on:2002-01-01Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y Q WangFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155360032952999Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Moving is one of the prominent characteristics of natural language, and it has long been one of the focus in the works of linguists. It is believed that the movement of the unit(s) of language is closely related with the psychology and thinking of human being. Therefore, it is desired that the study of it can reveal the mental activity of human being and be helpful to language teaching and leaning, further contribute to the self-cognition of human being. VP fronting is one important type of movement in natural language.Previous work either does not deal with VP fronting wholly or deal with it within the framework of one theory, eg. TG grammar or functional grammar. So, most of the previous works failed to give a thorough account of VP fronting. Absorbing previous achievement, based on the analysis of VP structure and a careful examination of a large corpus of naturally-occurring tokens, this paper presents a relatively thorough account of the types, mechanism, functions and restrictions of VP fronting within the framework of X?syntax, TO grammar, functional grammar, pragmatics, etc.The paper argues: VP fronting can be divided into two types---- VP preposing and VP inversion. VP preposing, which is a special case of topicalization, functions mainly as proposition affirmation or proposition suspension. Sometimes, it is also employed for rhetorical or syntactical purpose. VP inversion, which is the result of the exchange of the status of discourse-new information and discourse-old information, performs a connective function. VP fronting is also pragmatically and syntactically restricted----VP preposing requires a morphological match between S-i and S-2 and in a VP inversion the preposed element must not be newer in discourse than the postposed element.
Keywords/Search Tags:VP structure, VP fronting, VP preposing, VP inversion
PDF Full Text Request
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