Iconicity Account Of Left Dislocation Construction In English

LDC (Left Dislocation Construction) is a marked construction. Generally,linguists studied LDC from the perspective of generative grammar, functionallinguistics, pragmatics and cognitive linguistics. Studies on LDC from iconicityapproach is not enough and lack of system, depth and comprehensiveness. This thesisattempts to make a research on LDC from various iconicity principles, which willprovide a new perspective for the study of LDC.Based on iconicity theory,this thesis explores LDC from the perspective ofdistance iconicity, quantity iconicity, sequence iconicity, markedness iconicity andtopic iconicity and find its iconicity motivation. As a non-canonical construction,theexistence of LDC is not by accident but based on some production mechanism whichcan be found from the characteristics of LDC in word distance, quantity, sequence,markedness and topic. Therefore, the thesis believes there is a close relationshipbetween iconicity theory and LDC. Also,the production mechanism is based onvarious iconicity principles.The thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter one makes a brief introductionof LDC. Then the objectives, significance, and methodology of the present study arestated. Chapter two gives a brief review of the historic studies on LDC and putforward problems and solutions after absorbing the previous achievements. Chapterthree states the iconicity theory and discuss iconicity principles one by one. Based oniconicity theory, chapter four discuss the relationship between LDC and iconicityprinciples and draws conclusion. Chapter five makes a summary of the major findingsof this thesis and is ended with suggestions for future study.