A Study Of V-ing Ambiguity In Grounding Theory

Cognitive Grammar, as a complete new perspective of language research founded by Ronald W. Langacker in the late 20th century, is different from the traditional grammar, Noam Chomsky's TG grammar, M.A.K. Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar and so on. Since 21st century, more and more scholars have followed Langacker's paces, trying to explain all the grammatical phenomena from the perspective of human beings'mental conceptions, and then Grounding Theory came out and has become a well-found theory gradually. Grounding Theory explains how the things or processes are associated with cognitive situation by grounded nominal and grounded clause, and how to use the grammatical marks to build a mental connection between the thing or process and the speech participants.At present, most of the scholars in academic or teaching area intend to use traditional grammar to explain language ambiguity phenomena. Although some other grammatical theories have proposed their opinions on this issue, all these interpretations have their limitations. At the same time, Grounding Theory in Cognitive Grammar stays in a descriptive period, and it describes only how to ground the noun and the clause. Therefore, this study of V-ing ambiguity analysis, taking the methods from Grounding Theory, will apply a completely new visual angle to explain the language phenomena and broaden our scope of mind in language theory research and language teaching.At first, the thesis presents current situation of the Grounding Theory research and language ambiguity phenomena analysis and reviews the major theories of traditional grammar and modern grammar, especially elaborating their limitations of analyzing the V-ing ambiguity phenomena. And then, the thesis introduces Cognitive Grammar and Grounding Theory. The major representatives of Grounding Theory are: Ronald W. Langacker, John R. Taylor, Günter Radden. Ronald W. Langacker is the person who first proposes the concept of Grounding Theory in the frame of Cognitive Grammar, John R. Taylor simplifies and clarifies the structure of Grounding Theory. The latest statement is from Günter Radden, who applies the whole Grounding Theory into English grammar teaching and explains all the grammar marks from cognitive view. Therefore, the theory part first briefly introduces these three scholars'Grounding Theory separately, and then combines these ideas together to interpret the components of Grounding Theory, that is, the grounded nominal and the grounded clause.After this, according to the function of V-ing in a sentence, this study classifies the V-ing ambiguity phenomena into six kinds and finds out the causes of V-ing ambiguity phenomena from cognitive standpoint. And then, it uses Grounding Theory to improve these examples in order to make the sentence express clearly.At last, based on the preceding statement, the thesis proposes that the grounding elements in ambiguity analysis area still exist a broad developing space and points out that Grounding Theory might be further developed in analyzing language ambiguity phenomena. Language theories can only be developed by combining to the practice, so applying Grounding Theory to analyze the language ambiguity phenomena is to pave a way of theory development. In a word, there is a room for more scholars to complement the Grounding Theory.