Analogical Construction In English: A Mutual Dependence Model

“A is to B what C is to D”(for short Analogical Construction)is a conventional structure in English,featuring orderly structure with complete meaning but incomplete pattern.It's a form-meaning pairing-construction.Different from Chinese language which pays attention to analogical reasoning,English highlights deductive inference.Therefore,this special structure deserves research.As for this construction,according to the studies of previous researches,the author finds that in rhetoric aspect,many scholars regard it as analogy which is a fixed collocation with the view that “what” is a conjunction and connects two independent structure: “A is to B” and “C is to D”.It is equal to “as” both in meaning and function.Undoubtedly,on the one hand it is convenient for readers' understanding.On the other hand,it pays more attention to the facial meaning but ignores the deep connotation.In syntactic aspect,this construction is mainly regarded as Adverbial Clause of Comparison.Obviously,it is not the case for it not concerns the simple comparison between two pairs of events.In cognitive aspect,figure-ground theory and “IRM” model are employed.However,their focuses of attention enhance the influence of one to another rather than mutual effect or interactivity.This thesis,whereas,designs to provide a comprehensive study for “Analogical Construction”.The author adopts data-based and qualitative analysis methods,combining introspective method throughout the whole analysis on this paper.Based on the view that the recognition of prototype “Autonomy/Dependence” relation cannot allow us to ignore the existence of other possible relation,especially the mutual dependence relation,the author,on the foundation of “Autonomy/Dependence” model,establishes a mutual dependence model with profiling,correspondence,elaboration as well as constituency as major descriptive factors.In addition,with the support of cognitive semantics,views of encyclopedic knowledge,the author,taking the explicit and implicit expressions as breakthrough point or point of penetration,explores its syntactic features,semantic features as well as the process of meaning construction and semantic relations in different levels.Compared with previous researches,the mutual dependence model is of great power in dealing with the “Analogical Construction”.It is argued that the whole construction designates relation.Through the observation of corpus,A,B,C and D can be nominal expressions,nouns,pronouns or numerals.“Is” can be replaced by different related forms according to context.A-C and B-D are one-to-one correspondence.Taking the structure “A is to B” as Component One(for short C1),“what” as Component Two(for short C2)and “C is to D” as Component Three(for short C3),for the reason that both C1 and C3 cannot standby on their own,then define C1 and C3 as mutual dependent.C1 presupposes C3.On the contrary,C3 elaborates and presupposes C1.In this construction,C1 is mainly profiled.The whole relation can be described as Sc1(A?B)<?> Sc2(C?D).In addition,the meaning construction of this Analogical Construction is construed in light of the proximity and similarity between mutual dependent structures and the realization from explicit meaning to implicit meaning of this construction is bridged through the atypical use of “what” which is promoted through exploring the relations of “A is to B” and “C is to D”.It is worth to note that the process of meaning construction of this Analogical Construction needs the support of encyclopedic knowledge.In this construction,the syntactic features can be hierarchical or corresponding and the semantic features can be summarized as interactivity or profiling.The results of semantic relations between A and B are mainly explored as follows: representative relation;conditional relation;specific features existing between A and B;influential factors existing between A and B;specific participant;part-whole relation.This thesis is designed to provide a comprehensive and detailed study for “Analogical Construction”.Its significance lies in that it contributes to a new model to deal with language structures,which provides a perspective for other constructions.