A Study Of Syntactic Iconicity On Focus

All of languages are used for communication, and there exists a prominence in a sentence. This prosodic prominence is called focus by linguists. We can definite focus in this way: Focus is the part of sentence that is assumed by the speaker not to be shared by him and the hearer, in other words, focus is most important part in one sentence. Focus is a pragmatic concept, and it is usually marked by pitch accent on an especial word or phrase.Traditional approaches put more emphasis on functional and formal studies, covering different fields. As a result, there have emerged a lot of theories on focus as well as various viewpoints. Early research into focus paid inadequate attention to cognitive aspect when explanation was considered. In other words, there is not a systematic cognitive syntactic iconicity study on focus.Theory of language iconicity is a type of external motivation for linguistic structure. In order to find out the relationship between focus and syntactic iconicity, the author examines Saussure's theory of the arbitrariness of language and Peirce's theory of iconicity respectively. There are three categories of iconicity in language: phonological iconicity, morphological iconicity and syntactic iconicity. Syntactic iconicity based on word order, morphological iconicity based on word structure, and phonological iconicity based on the imitative and affective associations of sounds. Now research on iconicity has gone beyond phonological iconicity and morphological iconicity. The study approaches to concentrate mainly on syntactic iconicity.This paper attempts to demonstrate how the focus of syntax reflects the structure of thought and the structure of reality. Further, on the basis of examining the manifestation of syntactic iconicity in focus, the author approves of the study of focus under syntactic iconicity that will benefit language use, analysis and study.