A Cognitive Study Of The Quality-State Sentence In English

The quality-state sentence in this thesis is what is called the sentence active in form but passive in meaning, the middle voice, the middle sentence and the middle construction in previous studies. Many scholars at home and abroad have made a lot researches on sentences of this kind and have made great achievements. However, there are two deficiencies in the previous studies. One is that the statement "active in form but passive in meaning" conflicts with the basic rules of the grammatical category theory, and the other is that the statement of calling sentences of this kind the middle voice, the middle sentence or the middle construction conflicts with the language fact which there is not middle voice for English verbs. In this thesis, sentences of this kind are believed to reflect the quality state of things and are termed quality-state sentences. This thesis has made a study of sentences of this kind under the guidance of theories of cognitive linguistics.This thesis has first studied the generation and the expansion of the quality-state concept. The quality-state concept is the outcome of categorization and conceptualization of the quality state of things in our daily life, which indicates that a thing exists in a certain quality state, and the "thing" and the "quality state" are the two componential elements of the quality-state concept. Just like other semantic categories, the quality-state concept is also a prototype category. The difference between the prototypical numbers and the non-prototypical numbers lies in the fact that for the prototype quality-state concept, there is a direct logical "Patient-action relation" between the thing and the verb, which is first perceived by people, while for the non-prototypical quality-state concept, there is only an indirect logical "Patient-action relation" between the thing and the verb, which is perceived by people later. The mechanism of the expansion of the quality-state concept from its prototypical numbers to its non-prototypical ones is the changing of the cognitive perspective.The thesis has also studied the generation and the expansion of the quality-state sentence in English. The quality-state sentence in English is generated through the projection of the quality-state concept into English. Its grammatical form is "Subject+verb (+adverbial)", which is the sequential projection of the quality-state concept "thing+quality state", and in which "Subject" reflects the "thing", which is the state subject in the concept, and "verb+(adverbial)" reflects the "quality state" in the concept. The quality-state sentence also has its prototypical members and non-prototypical ones. The former, in which the "subject" is the direct logical object of the verb, is the projection of the prototypical quality-state concept in English, and the latter, in which the "subject" is not the direct logical object of the verb but the instrument, location and material related to the event denoted by the verb, is the projection of the non-prototypical quality-state concept in English.