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hat due to the least-effort principle. They prefer just to revise it at the end of this sentence. Such kind of reaction is unplanned. Therefore, RD is regarded as the preferred sentence pattern to revise mistakes made in the previous clause. 

Chapter Three  Theoretical Foundation .......................... 18

3.1 Cognitive Theories for Chinese RD Construction ...................... 18

3.1.1 Construction Grammar ............................ 19

3.1.2 Figure-ground Theory ............................ 20

Chapter Four  Formal Characteristics of Chinese RD Construction ............................ 30

4.1 Syntactic Properties ............................. 30

4.1.1 Syntactic Positions ............................ 30

4.1.2 Syntactic Functions ....................... 34

Chapter Five  Meaning Characteristics of Chinese RD Construction ............... 45

5.1 Semantic Properties .................. 45

5.1.1 Co-referentiality ..................... 45

5.1.2 Detachability ................................ 48 

Chapter Six Cognitive Motivations of Chinese RD Construction

6.1 Foregrounding the Dislocated Element

The figure-ground theory is established on the principle of prominence (Kuang & Wen, 2003). In the incipient period, it is widely used in gestalt psychology to explore the spatial organization of perception, particularly visual and auditory senses. Later, cognitive linguists introduce it to explain the intended meaning of linguistic structures. This section will explore cognitive motivations of the marked linguistic structure Chinese RD construction from the perspective of figure-ground dichotomy. 

In figure-ground theory, the figure is a prominent or dynamic part that receives more attention on the basis of the background, which is a less prominent or static part. As a result, the figure is more likely to be identified and remembered, and to be associated with meaning, feeling, and aesthetic values (Ungerer & Schmid, 2006). It is noteworthy that there is a segregation between figure and ground that the addresser and addressee cannot notice them at the same time or with the same efforts. This thesis holds that one cognitive motivation for Chinese RD construction is to foreground the dislocated element. 

Chinese RD construction is a marked structure, which is made of two parts, the matrix clause, and the dislocated element respectively. Based on the previous analysis of Chinese RDs, it is evident that they can be restored to the normal and standard sentence pattern for the reason that there exists co-referentiality between the resumptive form and dislocated part. According to the information structure, the dislocated element which is restored to the standard pattern is given information, serving as the background while the predicate is the inactive information, functioning as the figure. According to cognitive linguistics, cognition is reflected in the linguistic structure. The cognitive motivation for rightward dislocation is to make the dislocated elements more prominent and receive more attention in two respects. First, the sentence-final position, w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。