Exploration Of Tautology From Cognitive And Pragmatic Perspective

The prototypical construction of tautology (X be X) is frequently used now, which is accepted as pretty natural by people in their daily life. This thesis is an attempt to explore it from both cognitive and pragmatic perspectives aiming at finding out the motivations behind its generation and construal mechanism. The thesis consists of four chapters:Chapter one situates an introduction of the thesis, including literature review, the objectives, methodology and the theoretical framework as well as the organization of this thesis.Chapter 2 is devoted to explore prototypical tautology from cognitive perspective. We'll make a study on it with the following cognitive theories: prototype category theory, decategorization,recategorization, ICM, metonymy, and cognitive principles. Based on prototype category theory, construal for tautology can be regarded as the judgement about entity's categoriality; under the framework of decategorization and recategorization, the semantic and syntactic feature of"N2"in construction"N1 be N2"is more like a verb or an adjective; according to ICM, people can infer intended meaning easier in the context; with theory of metonymy and cognitive principles, the generation of tautology can be explained well.In chapter 3, prototypical tautology is studied under framework of relevance theory; the influence discourse markers exert on the construal for it will be illustrated focusing on the Chinese construction"X1 + adv + be +X2".Chapter 4 will summarize the thesis, in which major findings, limitations and future study directions are stated.