A Research Of English And Chinese Inversions From The Perspective Of The Prominence View

Inversion is a shared sentence pattern in English and Chinese. So far, scholars home and abroad have conducted researches from several perspectives. But comparative investigations on them are much fewer.This dissertation analyzes English and Chinese inversions by the assistance of "prominence target" and "cognitive reference point", a pair of notions of the prominence view in cognitive linguistics. Then, a multidimensional comparative research on them is done. Last but not least, the current study attempts to discover and reveal the deep-rooted causes.The present research divides English inversion into six categories, and classifies spoken Chinese inversion and written Chinese inversion into four and two categories respectively. A conclusion is reached that almost all the English inversions and most written Chinese inversions abide by the cognitive structure - Cognitive Reference Point+Prominence Target, and spoken Chinese inversions are in accordance with Prominence Target+Cognitive Reference Point. Judging by the form, English and Chinese inversions are got by inverting constituents, however, the effect of prominence is ultimately achieved by inverting people's thinking patterns.