The Generation And Expansion Of The Cause-effect Concept And The Cause-effect Sentence In English

The cause-effect relation refers to the inherent connection between events, resulting from the expansion of the causative relation between objects. The cause-effect concept in linguistics is the result of human conceptualization of the cause-effect relation between events. In this thesis, the cause-effect concept is defined as the occurrence of the cause-event causing the occurrence of the effect-event through its influence on the latter. Beginning with this definition, the thesis has investigated the generation and expansion of the cause-effect concept and the cause-effect sentence in English within the framework of the prototype theory, specific contents including the generation of the cause-effect concept, the semantic features of its prototypes and non-prototypes; the process, motivation and mechanisms of its expansion; the generation of the cause-effect sentence in English and the syntactic features of its prototypes and non-prototypes.The study shows that the cause-effect concept is generated from the mapping of the cause-effect relation in the physical world into the conceptual world. The prototypical cause-effect concept is the result of the mapping of the cause-effect relation between two objective events in the physical world, which is non-volitional and includes real-world cause-effect relation and conventional cause-effect relation. Both the cause-event and the effect-event are objective and the connection between them is independent of human wills. The non-prototype of the cause-effect concept is the result of the mapping of the cause-effect relation between two events subjectively assumed by people, which is volitional and includes premise-conclusion relation and premise-speech-act relation. In the non-prototypical cause-effect relation, the cause-event is objective, but the effect-event is subjective, involving such events as assumption and inference, speech-acts done by the speaker in accordance with the cause-event. In the process of generation and expansion of the cause-effect concept, such cognitive mechanisms as metaphor and subjective perspective play a prominent role.The thesis holds that the cause-effect sentence is generated from the mapping of the cause-effect concept into language:the prototypical cause-effect sentence from the prototypical cause-effect concept and the non-prototypical cause-effect sentence from the non-prototypical cause-effect concept. In English, the cause-event and the effect-event are represented by two clauses, and the logical connection between the two events is represented by a causal connective. There are three types of cause-effect sentences in English:(1) [Because] [CIause-CAUSE] [CIause-EFFECT];(2) [CIause-EFFECT], [because/for] [CIause-CAUSE];(3) [Since/Because/As] [Clause-CAUSE], [Clause-EFFECT].The first type is the prototype, and the other two the non-prototypes. Syntactically, the prototypical sentence and non-prototypical ones are different from each other in three aspects:the sequence of Clause-CAUSI and Clause-EFFECT, the use of the causal connective, and the use of the comma.The thesis has studied the generation and expansion of the cause-effect sentence in English by basing itself on the cause-effect concept. This study can not only enrich the theory of cognitive linguistics, but also provide some references for the study of similar linguistic phenomena.