Study Of Presentive Sentences In Text

This paper firstly summarizes the studies of the presentative sentences. It realizes that most of the studies either phraseologically or semantically focus on isolate and static simple presentative sentences, which is the genesis of this paper.From cognitive angle, based on the theory that syntax influence on forming image, this paper uses the method of comparing synonym sentences to particularly analyse the image changes made by the differences of word order in pretentative sentences. In this way, the image has four cognitive characteristics: the space-time background is conspicuous; behavioral sememe of predicate is weaken; the sentence focuses on the indefinite presentative subject at the end; the sentence is semantically unfinished.Then, according to the three metafunctions of language that Halliday mentioned and the types of speech act, the paper ascribes pretentative sentences to representative type, among whose three metafuctions, interpersonal fuction is weak, the other two—ideational and textual fuctions are relatively stronger. After that the paper bases on cognitive characteristics of presentative sentence, combines with the linguistic characteristics of description, narrative and illustration, thus demonstrates the conclusion that the representative function is not narrative nor illustrative but descriptive. Besides, according to the three sememes— [autonomous], [imitative], [experiential], the paper staples presentative sentence. Through comparing and analyzing sememes of each sub-category, the paper further ascertains the position of each sub-category in the inversed-triangle relation diagram. Furthermore, presentative sentences are analyzed their prominent functions in dynamic texts. And the actual corpus confirm the conclusion that the representative function is descriptive.Lastly the paper applies the cognitive principle of figure-ground to analyze the ground-figure cognitive structure of presentative sentence. And combining with the cognitive characteristics of presentative sentence,this paper expatiates upon the textual ground-function of the space-time phrases which work as ground in presentative sentence.It also expounds semantic extension and textual topic-function of the presentative subject which work as figure in presentative sentence. In this way the paper elucidates why presentative sentence plays so significant part in text.