A Cognitive Study Of The Interrogative Pronoun Shenme In A Dream Of Red Mansions

A Dream of Red Mansions,which inherited the modern Chinese and opened the contemporary Chinese,is the first choice for scholars to study the language of the eighteenth century.Many interrogative pronouns are used in A Dream of Red Mansions and many scholars always take them as the research objects.Based on the Chinese-English Parallel Corpus of A Dream of Red Mansions,we find out that,there are totally 1,829 cases of the interrogative pronoun shenme in A Dream of Red Mansions.Then the study of the interrogative pronoun shenme mainly includes semantics,co-occurrence,non-interrogative usages,involving the semantic,pragmatic and syntactic functions.Although many scholars have had studies on the interrogative pronoun shenme,the corpora are always random and lack systematic analyses and explanations on its interrogative usage and reasons for its usage change.Taking these problems into consideration,this thesis,on the basis of the text of A Dream of Red Mansions,taking focus,prominence as well as grammaticalization as the theoretical foundation,tries to have a cognitive study of the interrogative pronoun shenme.This thesis tries to answer the following questions:(1)What's the relationship between the interrogative pronoun shenme and focus in A Dream of Red Mansions?(2)What are the non-interrogative usage and focus properties of the interrogative pronoun shenme in A Dream of Red Mansions?(3)What's the cognitive motivation of the transformation of the interrogative pronoun shenme from interrogative usages to non-interrogative usages in A Dream of Red Mansions?On the basis of the theory of focus and the prominence principle,this thesis firstly has an analysis on the relationship between the interrogative pronoun shenme and focus,mainly concerning the specific interrogation,the yes or no question and the rhetorical question.Secondly,this thesis has further analyzed the non-interrogative usage and focus properties of the interrogative pronoun shenme in A Dream of Red Mansions.Finally,based on the theory of grammaticalization,this thesis gives a systematic analysis and explanation on the cognitive motivation and mechanism of the usage transformation of the interrogative pronoun shenme.The study has obtained the following findings:(1)In specific interrogations,the interrogative pronoun shenme is exactly the natural focus and both shenme and focus have the same syntactic and semantic characteristics as well as the means of focus expression are various.In yes or no questions,the interrogative pronoun shenme is not the natural focus and the answer to the whole sentence becomes the focus.In addition,in rhetorical questions,the interrogative pronoun shenme plays the role of the negative focus and the strength and weakness of its focus function is related with the degree of the question.Specifically,the stronger the degree of the question is,the weaker the focus function will be.(2)In the non-interrogative usage,the interrogative pronoun shenme has lost its focus function and its referential and non-referential functions strengthen,with the former including arbitrary reference,subjunctive reference,instance reference and the latter including the negative usage and exclamation.(3)The transformation of the interrogative pronoun shenme from interrogative usages to non-interrogative usages in A Dream of RedMansions is constrained by the grammaticalization mechanism.It also shows the unidirectional feature of the grammaticalization,and this transformation is a process in which the subjectivity gradually strengthens.The study of this thesis can expand the application scope of the theory of focus,the prominence principle and the theory of grammaticalization.It can also enrich the study of the interrogative pronoun shenme and meanwhile,it is also of reference value for Chinese learners to use the interrogative pronoun shenme correctly.