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Chapter OneIntroduction

1.1 Research background
Assertive construction has been widely discussed among scholars around the world.It carries the semantic category of “assertion”, which can be regarded as a universalproperty of human languages. According to Zimmermann (2009), the semantic categoryof “assertion” can be found in SVO, SOV, VSO languages and so on, which means itcan be expressed or conceived by different languages with different linguistic forms.Assertive construction can be represented by the form of XP be YP in English, whichcan be further divided into two types, in other words, assertive construction containstwo subtypes: simple and complex assertive construction. Simple assertiveconstructions can be formulated in the form of NP1 be NP2, which means both theprecopular part and the postcopular part are noun phrases in one copular clause; whilecomplex assertive constructions refer to the cleft and pseudo-cleft sentences.Although this thesis intends to focus on simple assertive construction, the relationbetween simple and complex assertive construction is still worth mentioning. Theinternal relationship between simple and complex assertive construction has beenrealized by some scholars, for example Patten and Reeve (2012). After studying manylanguages, they found that cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions are the subtypes ofspecification construction which in turn are subtypes of simple assertive construction.This means that simple assertive construction deserves more detailed studying.There are two different perspectives in regard to the syntactic properties of simpleassertive constructions. One is that the syntactic properties of NP1 be NP2 are decidedby the link-verb “be” which can be classified into the “be” of predication and the “be”of identification. The other is that the syntactic properties of NP1 be NP2 are derivedfrom its semantic function, thus, according to Akmajian, simple assertive constructionscan be classified into predicational sentences and specificational sentences. However,no matter what type of these two kinds of NP1 be NP2 belong to, it embodies relevanceof topic-comment between the subject and the object of a copular clause.
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1.2 Significance of the study
The thesis centers on the universal of Chinese and English simple assertiveconstruction by applying certain theories or principles of construction grammar and ofCognitive linguistics, as well as employing the research technique of linguistic typology.It has its theoretical and practical significance.In terms of its theoretical significance, firstly, it enriches the content of simpleassertive construction by taking tautology into consideration and applying basic theoriesand principles of construction grammar to describe the form and the meaning of Englishand Chinese simple assertive construction. Secondly, it also provides a new perspectiveon explaining similar linguistic phenomenon of two distinct languages by employingfigure-ground theory and embodied philosophy. Lastly, the thesis draws on the researchtechniques employed in linguistic typology and the research achievements in languageuniversal to explore the similar features of English and Chinese simple assertiveconstruction, which facilitates comparative study in the field of linguistics.In terms of its practical significance, the result of this thesis can be applied to thestudy in the field of general linguistics, language teaching and se本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。