英语论文网

　　
　　1. 1 The Objective and Significance of This thesis论文的意义和目标
　　English noun phrases are composed of four parts: the determiner, the premodifier,the head noun and the postmodifier. Premodifiers are important componential elementsof noun phrases, because they provide various kinds of information about the referent ofthe noun they modify, which makes it possible for people to know much about thereferent of the noun. Premodifiers of the noun can be realized by such word categoriesas adjectives, nouns and non-finite verbs represented by present participles such asinteresting and past participles such as interested. This thesis focuses on the pastparticiples that used as premodifiers in English noun phrases like an interested look.These past participles are called Adjectival Past Participles (APPs for short).APPs are in fact widely used in English and have always been important topics inthe study of English grammar. They are also the key points and difficult points inEnglish teaching. In the practical use of the language, it is not the case that any pastparticiples can occur before a noun to function as an APP. There are some constraints onthe use of APPs. Let us look at the following phrases:(1) a. a painted houseb. *a built house(2) a. a recently-sold carb. *a sold car(3) a. a born musicianb. *a born baby (Quirk, et al 1985: 1327)In these examples, the (a) phrases are correct while the (b) phrases are incorrect(marked by “*”). Examples in (1) indicate that not all past participles can be used asAPPs. Some past participles can only be used as APPs when they are added with othermodifiers like adverbs or prefixes like un- such as examples in (2). Besides, the samepast participle can sometimes be used as APPs but sometimes cannot as examples in (3).The constraints lead to difficulties and complicatedness in the learning andteaching of APPs. Students very often do not know how to use these premodifiers.Teachers also have difficulties in discovering effective rules for the different uses of theAPPs. Although a lot of work has been done in the research on the premodifiers ofEnglish nouns, there is still few touching upon the APPs. Most of previous studies arejust descriptive in nature. They are unsystematic and have not paid enough attention tothe explanation of the rules of the use of APPs. The fundamental reasons underlyingthem remain ignored. In recent researches, some linguists study the premodifiers fromdifferent perspectives, such as syntactic, semantic, pragmatic perspectives and theperspective of cognitive pragmatics, but their studies are simple and lack profundity. Asystematic theoretical explanation is needed on this topic.This thesis aims to clarify the complicatedness and to establish the systematicnessin the use of APPs from the perspective of categorization in cognitive linguistics. Thetheory of subcategorization will be applied. People can subcategorize various objectsaround us from many different angles, and the process of subcategorization is based onpeople’s experience of the world. A premodifier is a kind of subcategorization of whatthe head word refers to by language users. APPs are premodifiers that have the functionof subcategorizing the referents of the head nouns. In this thesis, the categorial sta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。