Cognitive Study On Ideographic Functions Of Letters As Linguistic Symbols In English Language

Issues on the arbitrariness and motivation of English lexis have been a controversy. Most linguists have considered the arbitrariness as a major essence of linguistic units. On the other hand, linguists and references are treating words or morphemes as the smallest meaningful unit, the origins of which have merely been traced through Ancient Greek and Latin.As cognitive linguistics burgeons, in contrast to the alphabetic feature and the indeconstructability of word roots or affixes, the ideographic and pictographic features of English letters and letter combinations are arousing considerations. However, few people have been aware of the features of language scripts in English language besides their alphabetic arbitrariness. Hence, this dissertation attempts to elaborate this issue, by chronic concerning the origins, evolvement and the features of English letters and letter combinations.The novelty of this dissertation resides in the emphasized importance of ideographic functions of English letters and letter combinations. In General, it, from a cognitive perspective, depicts the history of Modern English letters and their intrinsic nature. Firstly, through retrospection to traditional conceptions the arbitrariness and motivation, this paper discusses the pictographic, phonographic and ideographic natures of letters and letter combinations. Secondly, this paper attempts to uncover the inner principle of ideographic linguistic symbols by describing the origins and the process of evolvement. Thirdly, this paper demonstrates the motivated feature of alphabetic English language, especially of words, and it tells the interaction between pictographic and ideographic elements in English history. Moreover, by presenting the ideographic script theory, this study complements the limitation of traditional methodology of English vocabulary teaching, and it provides sound explanations about relevant phenomena of word spellings.In general, this dissertation proves the ideographic features of English letters and letter combinations, and letters and letter combinations can be treated as linguistic units smaller than words or morphemes. Complex phenomena in word spelling system of English can be rationally explained.