A Study Of English Adverbials As A Prototype Category

The English adverbial plays a very significant role in English and is a very important part of English grammar study.Previous studies on English adverbials in traditional grammar mainly belong to descriptive studies.As cognitive linguistics has risen and developed,scholars have begun to explain the essence and usage of English adverbials.However,so far few scholars have studied English adverbials as a prototype category.Regarding English adverbials as a prototype category,this thesis has made a relatively systematic study on their semantic and syntactic features under the guidance of the prototype theory and the event frame theory,and has given a unified explanation of the differences in usage between different adverbials.According to the prototype theory,all linguistic categories are prototype categories.The English adverbial,as a grammar category,is also a prototype category.The English adverbial as a prototype category has its experiential basis: it's the product of human categorization of the world on the basis of embodiment.The English adverbial constructs a prototype category based on family resemblance: its relation with the predicate of the sentence.Within this prototype category,the prototype isthe adjunct,and non-prototypes include the subjunct,the disjunct and the conjunct.On the basis of the event frame theory,this thesis has analyzed the semantic and syntactic features of adjuncts,subjuncts,disjuncts and conjuncts.The result of the analysis shows that adjuncts as prototypes within the ADVERBIAL category have close relation with the predicate of the sentence;they represent circumstantial meanings such as space,time,process and contingency,which are elements within the event frame;they can be presupposed and be the focus information in the sentence,and,as a result,they can become the focus of a cleft sentence,the contrasted focus in an alternative question,and the focus of a focusing subjunct,and be elicited by question forms and be placed before or after the predicate in the sentence.The result of the analysis also shows the semantic and syntactic features of subjuncts,disjuncts and conjuncts as non-prototypes of the ADVERBIAL category,that is,they don't have close relation with the predicate;they represent non-circumstantial meanings such as modality,degree,comment,and linking,which are elements outside the event frame;they can neither be presupposed nor be the focus information in the sentence,and,as a result,they can't become the focus of a cleft sentence,the contrasted focus in an alternative question,and the focus of a focusing subjunct,and be elicited by question forms and be often placed before the predicate in the sentence.The study in the thesis has enlarged the application of the prototypetheory,and the description and explanation of the semantic and syntactic features of English adverbials in the thesis have reference value to the teaching and learning of English adverbials.