A Pragmatic Study Of Grammaticalization In English Interrogatives

The present thesis tries to analyze grammaticalization in English interrogatives from a pragmatic perspective, with a view to exploring its motivations, paths and mechanism.By means of qualitative analysis, a large number of English interrogatives collected are classified and analyzed. It is shown that the grammaticalization in English interrogatives is realized by the loss of interrogative markers and the scope of interrogation. To account for the trigger of such grammaticalization, pragmatic syntagma and the Maxim of Quantity are employed. It is found that interrogative grammaticalization results from questioning tendency of the addressor and the occupation of English interrogatives under different contexts. And that the degree of grammaticalization varies with the degree of questioning tendency and different contexts.It is hoped that the present thesis can offer a new theoretical approach to the analysis of the grammaticalization phenomena in English interrogatives. And the study presented here is also expected to bring new inspirations to the pragmatic grammaticalization study by incorporating the grammaticalization phenomena of English interrogatives with other grammatical-pragmatic problems into a more comprehensive linguistic performance,as well as to give English learners a clue to the evolution of English interrogatives.