Exploration Of The Valence Relations Of Cognitive Grammar

This thesis is intended to introduce some research achievements about the valence relations of the traditional grammar made by such linguisticians as Lucien Tesniere, Gerhard Helbig, M.A.K. Halliday, C. Fillmore et al, and to analyze current situations and developing track of the valence theory studies at home and abroad. Because linguisticians judge the valence in numerous and complicated ways, it is developed the trend of deciding the valence by a sentence structure. Therefore, the valence theory of traditional grammar, to some extent, has some limitations in analyzing the sentence structure. This thesis mainly focuses on judgment of the Valence Relations of Cognitive Grammar of R. W. Langacker who is the representative of the theory, and sufficiently elaborates the theoretical and practical values of valence relations of cognitive grammar from four following aspects, namely, constitution of composite structure based on correspondence between structures with more than two constituents, issues between relation profile and nominal profile, different ways of alignment between autonomous and dependent components, case study of the cognitive grammar valence in the simple and composite English sentences. The study shows that valence relations of cognitive grammar is originated from the research results of the traditional valence theory but more development and progress of this theory, and it has become the trend of the valence grammar study nowadays. It clearly points out that though both reflect connection between components in the language structure and analysis of models of sentence structures, the cognitive and traditional valence theories are different obviously in governing body, verb valence, judgment of complement and declarative statement, and ways of analyzing on sentence structure. As a focus of linguisticians'study, the core value of the cognitive valence theory is breaking up the"Verb Centric"formula of the traditional valence theory. The traditional valence theory believes that there are only verbs possess the valence ability through analyzing the valence to classify sentences. However, the cognitive valence theory believes that not only verbs possess the valence ability, all component structures have. It holds that the grammar is explained by the symbolic units in the cognitive grammar valence which has enlarged the category of the valence component, united the standard of the valence, and has obvious advantage in elaboration of language essence. Analyses of applications of numerous cases show that comparison of the cognitive valence theory between the traditional valence theory, the cognitive valence theory can help people more effectively master the generation of sentences and construction of semantics, and efficiently learn the English grammar through abstracting the grammatical construction into conceptual schemas formed in brains for the realistic life.