Analysis Of English And Chinese Inversion From The Perspective Of Figure-Ground Theory

All languages have the characteristic of linear arrangement, which causes word order to be an important object in linguistic studies. Inversion, as a marked sentence structure derived from the canonical sentence, is common in both English and Chinese, and has been attracting the attention from domestic and foreign linguists. However, previous studies were mainly conducted from the perspectives of rhetoric, syntax, pragmatics, and information status. Nowadays, as the interface study of syntax-semantics has become one of the important approaches in contemporary linguistic researches, cognitive linguistics, which is based on the observation and conceptualization of outside world and human experiences, provides a new angle to inspire further researches on the recognition and understanding of languages.Within the framework of cognitive linguistics, the present thesis has analyzed the features and mechanisms of English and Chinese inversions from the perspective of Figure-Ground theory and has made a comparison between them.Firstly, based on Chen Rong’s (2003) GbF model, the present thesis has analyzed English full inversion. It is held that the speaker/writer subjectively transfers the natural word order of subject (Figure)-predicate-object/complement (Ground) to the inverted order of object/complement (Ground)-predicate-subject (Figure). The inverting is carried out within the grammatical regulations with the motivation to direct the hearer’s attention to the Ground first as a reference-point and then search for the marked Figure.Next, inspired by the GbF model, the present thesis put forward the FpG model (Figure-preceding-Ground), which has been applied to interpret the inversion in spoken Chinese. Inversion in spoken Chinese tends to put the important and urgent information before the supplementary information in the rear part.Thirdly, due to different features of inversions between spoken and written Chinese, the present thesis has explained inversions in written Chinese according to a modified GbF model proposed in the thesis. Regarding the inversion in written Chinese, the writer has changed the original Figure in the canonical sentence into the Ground of the inverted sentence, and the original Ground has been shifted to be the Figure, because the information that the writer wants to emphasize has changed.Inversion is a marked linguistic instantiation of Figure-Ground theory and can lead hearers’/readers’attention to the emphasized information. From the perspective of sentence arrangements, English and Chinese inversion can be seen as the product of inverting sentence constituents; from the perspective of cognition and thought, inversion is a means to highlight information by going against regular thoughts.