The Autonomy-Dependency Analysis Of Chinese Cant

Chinese cant is deemed as the special language product formed in old age and prevailed in old society. As a national linguistic phenomenon, it possesses its own research value. Though cant is a typical and conventional phenomenon, few research has been conducted on this aspect before. Especially, scholars seldom discussed cant from the cognitive perspective. So in this dissertation, the author intends to apply autonomy-dependency theory as the theoretical framework and cognitive tool to study Chinese cant. Furthermore, efforts are made to improve and widen the relevant knowledge of cognitive linguistics. The significance of this study consists in two aspects: (1) extending and developing autonomy-dependency in terms of cognitive-pragmatic perspective, for the understanding of Chinese cant depends on the context in which the utterance is made; (2) Chinese cant and autonomy-dependency are both new fields for linguistic research, which are seldom noticed by other linguists, which is a new attempt in exploring human cognitive capability and in revealing the cognitive mechanism behind linguistic phenomenon.By virtue of the above research intentions, the objective of this research is to testify the universality and plausibility of the newly-presented language generation theory--autonomy-dependency, and further clarify the application range of autonomy-dependency in typical Chinese linguistic entities. The method used in this dissertation is data-based analysis and interpretation under Mental Models framework. The so-called hypothesis can be expressed as: the cognitive mechanism which is the core research objective in cog-pragmatic domain behind linguistic phenomenon, especially language generation, is autonomy-dependency theory presented first by Langacker(1993):'In an autonomy-dependence alignment, the degree of dependence of two components on each other is different, which results in that one is dependent and the other is autonomous'(Langacker 1987: 486). The autonomy is a structure existing on its own and its existence is not presupposed by the existence of another structure, but the dependence is presupposed by autonomy. The relationship between autonomy and dependence is relative, which is supposed to be converted on certain conditions,(Zou chuling,2007)but the general criterion for distinguishing dependence and autonomy is to see whether it can operate and exist on its own. And then by Xu Shenghuan(2006,2007). Autonomy-dependence alignment is one of the two components of MM-based pragmatic reasoning. Its origin cannot be separated from explicit expression-implicit expression inference. The section above puts forward an assumption of explicit expression-implicit expression inference as: an utterance as the explicit expression is incomplete, which must be complemented and elucidated by the implicit expression to arrive at the complete appropriate understanding in a given context (Xu Shenghuan, 2006c:163-170). As to data analyzed in this paper, most of them adopted from the nowadays novels and dramas to ensure the reality nature of them, and the research layer basically lies on the Chinese cant, the aim of which is to strengthen the national theory development and application study. Based on these typical linguistic analyzing and interpreting method and research procedure, this dissertation attempts to achieve the research objective, to pursue the creation in cognitive theories.In all, the terminal conclusion of the paper is: if people can make clear about the cognitive process--how autonomy-dependency helps to infer the intended meaning, they can know the communicative meaning rather than the literal meaning delivered by the speaker. This dissertation is designed to achieve that goal. Part one is the introduction of the whole dissertation which explains the objectives, key research questions, hypothesis and data of this thesis, and accounts the basic features of Chinese cant with a brief introduction of framework, material collection and methodology, to expound and prove the plausibility and feasibility of this dissertation. In part two, the author reviews a series of relevant theories domestic and abroad of the past years in retrospect, and presents history and academic background for this thesis. Part three provides the theoretical background and hypothesis, objectives, and methodology. Part four, on the basis of relevant theories, the author complementarily lists the classification of Chinese cant and analyzes the generation mechanism for the different sorts, forming the analysis patterns of this dissertation. Accordingly, it shows so many examples of this research which are collected from novels, TV, internet and so on. Part five is the further discussion of mechanism of connotation and denotation, taking them as a cognitive-pragmatic phenomenon. Part six is the overall conclusion of this dissertation, which contains summary, validity, reliability, limitation and further research.