Nested Mental Processing As A New Perspective Towards Thought Presentation

Traditional study of thought presentation analogizes to speech presentation,focusing on the categorization of modes and analyzing characteristics and effect of different modes,thus overlooks the cognitive complexity of thought different from language.One of the manifestations of cognitive complexity is nested mental processing.The so called nested mental processing in this thesis refers to the phenomenon that the mental processing with several levels of mental processing nested within it can be further mentally processed.Although being noticed by some scholars as one part of theory of mind,the linguistic representation of nested mental processing has not been fully studied yet.This thesis builds up the cognitive model of nested mental processing,including three elements: mental processing level,mental processor and mental act.The object(mental processee)of mental processing can be non-mental or mental.In the later case,another mental processing level will be nested.Mental processing consists of perception,cognition and modality.Modal auxiliary combines with other mental verbs as one level of mental processing.Mental processing can be further mentally processed,nested within other one.The phenomenon of nested mental processing exists in language,especially in fiction,where characters always wonder and process the mind state of himself or other.Nested mental processing can be classified according to the number of level,such as first level mental processing,second level mental processing and third level processing.According to the type of mental act,it can be perceptive nested mental processing,cognitive nested mental processing,modal nested mental processing or mixed nested mental processing.The subject committing the act of mental processing is called mental processor.It can be the same mental processor nested with itself or other subjects.This thesis mainly studies the linguistic representation of nested mental processing,including deixis,mental word,tense,aspect,voice,modality and embedded clause structure,using Mrs.Dalloway as a case study to testify theexplanatory power of the cognitive model of nested mental processing and provided new study materials and methods for thought presentation as reference.This thesis have four main findings.First,nested mental processing is abundant in Mrs.Dalloway.Second,the cognitive model can be used to analyze nested mental processing at least in Mrs.Dalloway.It simplifies the procedure and makes the relationship among mental acts clearer.Third,non-verb word can also be mental word to take one level of mental processing.Mental word “thought” occurs frequently to reminder the reader whose mental processing is presented.Past tense and past perfect tense are the main tenses to tell a story happened in the past.The lower level can be not only the direct object of the higher level,but also subordinate clause of the higher clause.Fourth,the research towards thought presentation from the perspective of nested mental processing is feasible.