A Study Of Word Order Of Multiple Premodifiers In English None Phrase From Iconicity Perspective

As an important component of linguistic form, word order can be a hot topic in the research of English grammar. And the multiple premodifiers in English noun phrase are a common phenomenon in English sentence, the study of word order of multiple premodifiers is given great concern by linguists both home and abroad. Traditional approaches focus on the classification of word order, such as syntactic approach, semantic approach and pragmatic approach. But these three approaches are restricted to the internal linguistic factors and ignore the external factors such as human's cognition, and some of studies of word order paid less attention to the influence which cognitive factors effect on the word order. In recent years, with the development of cognitive linguistics some linguists begin their studies on the ordering of multiple premodifiers from a cognitive perspective, though there are some limitations in their researches. This thesis is a research on the word order of the multiple premodifiers in English noun phrase, and discusses the three main iconicity principles from human's cognitive process, cognitive principle and cognitive strategy. And then it points out that there are not only proximity iconicity but also sequence iconicity and quantity iconicity concerning multiple premodifier in English noun phrase. Based on the three iconicity principles, this thesis aims to analyze and explain the ordering of multiple premodifiers in English noun phraseBased on the iconicity theory, this thesis makes a comprehensive research of its application to the ordering of multiple premodifiers in English noun phrase, to certain extent, it not only widen the scope of word order but also deepen the research of iconicity theory.