The Study Of The Cognitive Motivation Of Left Dislocation Construction From The Perspective Of Iconicity

Left dislocation construction is a kind of unconventional word order structure commonly found in all languages and has attracted the attention of many scholars since its introduction in the 1960 s.In the previous studies,left dislocation construction has been researched in depth from generative approach,functional approach,and cognitive approach.Most of the studies focus on the generation mechanism of left dislocation construction,the difference between left dislocation construction and Topicalization,and its cognitive features,etc.There are few systematic studies which have been conducted to analyze its cognitive motivations.In view of this,this thesis adopts the iconicity in cognitive linguistics to carry out the research.Based on the principles of sequence,quantity,distance and markedness of iconicity,the iconic representation of left dislocation construction is elaborated and its cognitive motivation is explored.The research questions of this thesis are as follows:(1)What representation does the left dislocation construction have from the perspective of iconicity?(2)What is the underlying cognitive motivation of left dislocation construction in terms of iconicity?The following conclusions are drawn based on the research questions:(1)The left dislocation construction is characterized by iconicity in the principles of sequence,quantity,distance and markedness.The main representations are: the leftward dislocation of the constituents in the sentence,the filling of the original position in the sentence after the dislocation,the closeness between the dislocated constituents and the core constituents of the sentence,and the markedness of its structure.(2)The special sequence of left dislocation construction reflects the cognitive order of information expression.The quantity of the dislocated components reflects the prominence meaning of their cognitive behavior.The distance feature of left-dislocated components from the core components in the structure reflects the closeness of their semantic expression.And the markedness feature of left dislocation construction reflects the markedness of their meaning expression and cognition.The contributions of this thesis are summarized as follows:(1)From the perspective of iconicity,this thesis explores the cognitive motivations of the left dislocation construction and provides a new cognitive perspective for the study of the left dislocation construction.(2)This thesis enriches the applicability of iconicity in language by analyzing the iconicity of the left dislocation construction,which is a common but marked structure.(3)The construal of the cognitive motivation of language structure would be helpful in providing a deeper grasp of human cognition and find the interdependent relationship between language and cognition.From a practical point of view,the finding of the research can also be applied to language teaching and language learning.