A Cognitive Approach To Topic Construction

The theories of topic and topic construction are the long-lasting debate among many linguists. The linguists have examined it under different approaches and from different angles. The term "topic" has been used not only to refer to a supposedly discourse-based category in a wide variety of language, but a "topic and comment" (Hockett, 1958), or a "topic-prominent" language (Li & Thompson, 1976), or a "topicalization" or a "topic continuity" (Givon, 1979), or a "discourse topic" (Brown and Yule, 2000). So, the understanding of topic can be various. Some linguistics regard it as a syntactic concept, some consider it as a pragmatic concept, some believe it is sentential topic, some think it is structure topic, and others take it as discourse topic or text topic.The concept of 'topic and comment' is first mentioned by C.F. Hockett in his book A Course in Modern Linguistics (1958). Then, it is Chao Yuanren (1968) who first introduces the concept in the study of Chinese, and he suggests it in his book A Grammar of Spoken Chinese. And topic/comment is still one of the most influential issues debated by many linguists.Besides, the term "topic construction", which is a grammatical device used to fulfill certain linguistic functions, is also the study focus of many researchers.Many researchers have been studying English topic construction in different frameworks such as semantics, syntax, and functional grammar. Also, topic construction has attracted much research interest from Chinese scholars, such as Jin Jiling (1991) and Yang Shiqiao (2002), who have respectively identified six and four differences of the topic construction between Chinese and English, two similarities and five differences.But there are still some problems with the researches. The rising of cognitive linguistics offers some insight on the explanation of topic and topic construction. According to Lambrecht, "A referent is interpreted as the topic of a proposition if in a given situation the proposition is construed as being about the referent, i.e. as expressing information which is relevant to and which increases the addressee's knowledge of this referent" (Lambrecht, 1994: 131). Obviously, there is a correlation between the cognitive status of a referent and its acceptability as a topic. So, we can study topic and topic construction from a cognitive approach. In addition, we can learn more about the approaches to topicalization.Through the study, this paper explores topic and its features, topicalization and its devices within the framework of reference point theory from cognitive grammar. We can see that topic construction is, in essence, a cognitive reference point construction, in which topic is the referent point and target is a proposition.This dissertation comprises four chapters.Chapter one serves as a brief introduction to the study of topic, topic construction and topicalization in different fields; then the tentative approach of reference point theory in cognitive linguistics to the research of topic construction.Chapter two is a literature review of the previous studies on topic, topic construction and topicalization from different approaches and perspectives; also, there are studies on topic construction at home and abroad.Chapter three deals with the introduction of reference point theory and the application of reference point in topic construction. It also discusses the realization of topicalization.Chapter four is the conclusion of the whole dissertation, which summarizes the thesis and shows that topic construction is, indeed, a cognitive reference point construction...