Functions Of Perspective In Syntactic Construction

Point of view is originally a term used in rhetoric and literature criticism. It came into the fields of linguistics in 1970s in the western counrty, and linguists began to realize that POV is a concept of pragmatics later. And at present, POV has also been studied domestically. In the 1990s Xiong Muqing made a thorough research on POV and tried to establish a systematic theory of POV. He mentioned the cognitive dimension of POV but his researches have been carried out mainly in the field of discourse analysis and pragmatics, with no much effort upon syntax, although he probed the interaction between perspective and verb voice. The syntactic function shows the relationship between a linguistic form and the other parts of the linguistic pattern in which it is used. Names of functions are expressed in terms of subjects, objects, predicators, modifiers, complements, etc. And some other researches have been carried out on directional verbs as go and come, and prepositions as into, out, up and down. It must be admitted that seldom efforts have been offered on the explanation of syntactic structures in general.My research here is based on this notion, with purpose to investigate some general principles of syntactic constructing in English. The sentence can be seen as a point-of-view frame, in which the syntactic point of view (or perspective) governing the choice of noun and verb and preposition accordingly, as Ungerer & Schmid pointed out that the difference between the choice of verbs is simply a change of perspective within the same frame, such as sell and charge perspectivize the situation from the SELLER'S point of view.We employ in the research the qualitative method for the most part, though some other methods as documentary and quantitative methods are also used.This thesis aims to perfect the theory of point-of-view frame and on the basis of the frame we try to establish a model or approach to offer a new explanation of English syntax. Chapter one gives the general introduction of the thesis covering the rationale, objectives, organization of the study as well as the methodology applied in the research and data collection. Chapter two offers a historical overview of researches on syntactic perspective and sentence construction. Chapter three gives a thorough discussion of frame, including Fillmore's Frame and Xiong Muqing's Frame. And then a sentential point-of-view frame will be established and its working mechanism analyzed. Chapter Four intends to explore the working mechanism of point-of–view frame in constructing the three basic types of English sentences. Chapter five explores the working mechanism of point-of-view frame in constructing phrases: prepositional phrase and adverbial phrases. Chapter six discusses the influences of perspective upon some syntactic aspects. And the last chapter is the conclusion which summarizes the main ideas of this thesis, its contributions and suggestions for further study.