A Study Of The Grounding Of English Direct Conditionals

The direct conditional is a rather important part in English grammar,which attracts great attention from linguists and grammarians both abroad and at home to write an increasing number of papers and works about it.Though many studies are about its classification,semantic logic,pragmatic function and so on,there are few analyzing the pattern of predicate verbs' grounding.Besides,most of the previous studies are descriptive,lack of comprehensive understanding and detailed explanation about the pattern of predicate verbs' grounding.What's more,what effect the pattern of predicate verbs' grounding has on the cognitive reality expressed by the English direct conditional is baffling.With these concerns,this thesis proposes two research questions:(1)What are prototypical and non-prototypical patterns of predicate verbs' grounding of English direct conditionals and what are their motivations?(2)What are the relations between the cognitive reality expressed in English direct conditionals and the patterns of predicate verbs' grounding?This thesis,which takes the Grounding Theory by Langacker(1991b,2008)as the main theory foundation,does research on the patterns of predicate verbs' grounding of English direct conditionals and reveals the construction of cognitive reality in them at the same time.There are forty-eight possible patterns of predicate verbs' grounding of English direct conditionals,among which there are nineteen prototypical patterns and twenty-nine non-prototypical ones.In the light of the Figure-Ground Theory by Talmy(2000),this thesis analyzes the cognitive motivations behind the fact that there are prototypical and non-prototypical patterns of predicate verbs' grounding of English direct conditionals.With the four principles as the standard(sequence principle,inclusion principle,cause-result principle,and contingency principle),this thesis finds that all the nineteen prototypical patterns follow three of the principles.Among the twenty-nine non-prototypical patterns,six violate sequence principle,seventeen violate inclusion principle,twenty-nine violate cause-result principle,and twenty-six violate contingency principle.Furthermore,of the twenty-nine non-prototypical patterns,seventeen follow only one principle,and twelve follow none of the four principles.Inspired by the Prototype Theory(members in a category are different in prototypicality),we find the more principles a pattern follows,the more prototypical it is in the category of patterns of predicate verbs' grounding of English direct conditionals.As for relations between the cognitive reality expressed in English direct conditionals and the patterns of predicate verbs' grounding,the pattern of the predicate verbs' grounding plays a significant role.After investigating the cognitive reality of all the nineteen prototypical patterns,this thesis finds that there are also prototypes and non-prototypes in the category of cognitive reality,and the members can be ranked according to their degrees of prototypicality.