The Cognitive Mechanisms Of Wh-cleft Constructions

Wh-cleft construction,as a special construction,has been a fascinating topic for hundreds of years,which has been researched and discussed repeatedly.Previous studies have mainly been conducted from the point of view of traditional grammar,transformational grammar,systematic functional grammar and cognitive linguistics.Nevertheless,these findings are neither very plausible nor very explanatory.For one thing,regarding the origin of constructional meaning of wh-cleft constructions,some researches have ascribed it to the copular be,which has aroused heated discussion and is not able to reach an agreement in the academic circle.For another,in terms of the origin of the function of exclusive identifying,there has not been a unifying opinion about it.Construction grammar has long been perceived in synchronic terms and lots of research has been conducted under this framework.While in this thesis,a more comprehensive view of aligning diachronic linguistics with construction grammar is adopted.Adopting both synchronic and diachronic approaches,this thesis tries to examine the syntactic,semantic and pragmatic features of wh-cleft constructions in English on the theoretical basis of construction grammar,as well as its cognitive mechanisms,in an attempt to provide some insights into a more comprehensive and deeper understanding of wh-cleft sentences from the perspective of construction grammar.On this basis,the current research takes wh-cleft construction as a case study and is devoted to making a relatively thorough investigation on the form and meaning emergence and development of wh-cleft constructions.In the meantime,the thesis also tries to figure out the motivations and mechanisms behind those linguistic changes.The present study is mainly concerned with two questions as follows:(1)What are the syntactic,semantic and pragmatic features of wh-cleft constructions?(2)Why are wh-cleft construction motivated? In other words,how are the form and meaning of wh-cleft constructions motivated? The major findings are as follows.First,in the emergence and development of wh-cleft constructions,there are some typical syntactic,semantic and pragmatic characteristics.For syntactic features,it ischaracterized by a form-meaning pairing.The form of wh-cleft constructions can be depicted as: S be XP,where S is a nominal relative clause headed by a wh-word,XP is the highlighted element whose most frequent categories of class is NP.XP is the specified value for the semantic slot in S.It shows a kind of exclusive listing of the variables in S as well as specifying a value X for the variable.For semantic and pragmatic properties,wh-cleft constructions possess the function of exclusive identifying,reversibility as well as existential presupposition.To be specific,the whole evolution process of wh-cleft construction is characterized by the increase in productivity and in schematicity,together with the decrease in compositionality.Increased productivity is mainly in increase in terms of token and type frequency.Second,language change is a result of the interaction and integration of multiple relevant factors.As for the mechanisms of the evolution of wh-cleft constructions,schematic inheritance,together with semantic integration,plays a crucial role in the development.At the same time,the role of context and neoanalysis are at play in the entrenchment and schematization of wh-cleft constructions in that they make it possible for wh-cleft constructions to be used thousands of times in practical language use.Cognitive linguistics is aimed to seek the general principles governing all aspects of human language.The present study makes use of a unified cognitive language evolution theoretical model and takes wh-cleft constructions as a case study to make a relatively thorough investigation on the form and meaning changes of wh-cleft constructions,which is of great significance.To start with,the present research sheds some light on the origin of form and meaning of specificational constructions for the fact that wh-cleft construction is one of the indispensable members of specificational constructions.Besides,it improves in some measure the schema hierarchy theory of constructions.It also provides an example of the ways in which combining the insights of grammaticalization and construction grammar can help account for micro-changes in syntax.Finally,this thesis enlarges the approaches to construction grammar studies in some way.