The Exploration Of Cognitive Mechanism Of Spatial Locative Inversion In English From The Perspective Of Figure And Ground Theory

Inverted clause is a pervasive and common language phenomenon in English.And previously,researchers who are interested in it have conducted researches on the inverted clause from different perspectives including pragmatic function,rhetorical function and the like.Recently,scholars have explored the inversion under the guidance of the cognitive linguistics in order to expound the relationship between language and human beings' mind.One of the foremost cognitive theories they primarily have employed to conduct their studies refers to the Figure-Ground theory or the Trajector-Landmark theory.Many remarkable achievements have been made to the great extent that they advance great development in theory as well as practical application in the analysis of language.However,many studies on the inverted clauses in the perspective of the Figure-Ground theory are confined to descriptive level,that is,what element is Figure and What element is Ground,lacking profoundly to point out the core factors that governs and affects the selection and organization pattern of the Figure and Ground.Also,the analysis of the cognitive mechanism of the spatial locative inversion is inadequate.And the depth and breadth of the study on the cognitive mechanism have limitations.Besides,factors that control the operation of the cognitive mechanism are not fully explored.This study chooses the spatial locative inversion one of inverted clauses in English as the research object and implements a detailed research on it from the perspective of Figure and Ground theory.And with the comparative analysis between the inverted one and non-inverted one,this research aims to reveal the whole cognitive mechanism of the spatial locative inverted clause and to unfold the primarily influential factors that control and manipulate the operation of the cognitive mechanism.Through elaborated analysis,the following findings are drawn:In terms of the formation of cognitive mechanism,the whole cognitive mechanism of the spatial locative inversion involves three cognitive processes including Back-Front schema,the grammatical valence process and subjectification.The cognitive process from interaction with the objective world to the formation of the Back-Front schema and to the grammatical valence process is a kind of reality-cognition-language cognitive model and the cognitive process from objective construal to subjectification is a kind of cognition-language model.Factors governing the operation of the cognitive mechanism involve many facets.The internal prominence of things,content-driven factors affect the selection and organization pattern of the Figure and the Ground.Besides the dynamic construal process,the selection and organization of the Figure and the Ground also affect the formation of the Back-Front schema.And all these factors lay an indispensible foundation for the generation of the spatial locative inverted construction to a large extent.Subjectification is conducted on the basis of the Formation of Back-Front schema.