A Study Of English Cleft Sentence From The Cognitive Perspective

Cleft sentence is a particular English Construction. This paper mainly focuses onthe cleft sentence in English. As a marked sentence，the cleft sentence reflects thesubjectivity of human cognition. However, previous researches on the cleft sentenceonly focus on its form and function. Some have described its syntactical features andprovided rules for transforming a no-cleft sentence into a cleft sentence, and othersanalyzed its discourse and textual functions. But few of them have probed into thedeep cause that motivates the appearance of the cleft sentence.In the diachronic studies, the researches on the cleft sentence can be groupedunder four headings:(1) traditional analyses,(2) transformational analyses,(3)information-based approaches and (4) discourse-oriented approaches. The first class istraditional analyses represented by Otto Jespersen. They believe that the reason why‘it-cleft’ construction is so called is because it divides a single clause into twoseparate sections, each with its own verb. Scholars in the second class are interested infinding out the ‘deep’ or ‘underlying’ structure of cleft construction and the varioustransformational rules which, step by step, convert it into its surface structure. Thetopic of the third class is the studies whose focus is on ‘information structure’ of cleftconstruction on the basis of information. Distinguishing different types of cleftconstruction is also one of the research goals of this school. The fourth class study thecleft sentence integrated into discourse environment and begin to pay attention to thediscourse function of the cleft sentence.Based on the framework of the prominence view, this thesis has made a study onthe cleft sentence with the help of the figure/ground principle and the concepts ofthematic roles, resulting in providing cognitive motivation for the appearance andapplication of the cleft sentence, and in supplying cognitive interpretations to all thegrammatical features presented by the cleft sentence.In this thesis, prominence has been divided into conventional prominence andcontextual prominence. Conventional prominence is the natural prominence of entitiesperceived in the process of human cognition. Entities with natural prominence cantake the position of subject to manifest their prominent status. However, in specificcontexts, entities without natural prominence can become objects of human cognitionand be represented linguistically by special grammatical devices. This is contextualprominence. Contextually prominent entities can be put into the slot of subject tomanifest prominence, which results in marked subjects. When the prominence ofcontextually prominent entities is manifested by special constructions, marked constructions are generated. The cleft sentence is just such a marked construction, thegeneration of which is cognitively motivated by contextual prominence. According tothe figure/ground principle，It be in the cleft sentence is the trigger, the positionbehind the trigger is the focal position where the figure is placed to manifestcontextual prominence, and the clause introduced by that/who is the ground. Thispaper also points out the problems that Talmy puts forward five principles for thefigure/ground relations of complex sentences. At last, the cognitive account has beenoffered that speakers often choose marked sentences instead of routine sentences.