英语论文网

Traditional grammar maintains that a simple clause is basically constituted by three elements, a subject, a predicate, and a complement respectively (Ungerer & Schmid, 2006) in accordance with syntactic rules. The actual realization of language with this normal pattern is widespread and preferred by native speakers in daily communication as well as second language learners in their acquisition process. For example,

(1) Susan loves bananas. (2) The hammer breaks the glass. (3) Jeffery has a large library.

However, considerable expressions underpinned by an abnormal structure occur in discourse at a rather high frequency, which manifests the characteristics that one constituent is displaced to the end of a complete sentence while leaving a resumptive element at the canonical place echoing with it (Bloomfield, 1933; Ross, 1967; Altman, 1981; Quirk, 1985; Wen, 2005; Zhang & Qiu, 2005). Moreover, although framed by this marked paradigm, it is of no great difficulty for language users to reach a correct interpretation of these particular sentences for the reason that their standard versions are easily restored by some simple operations. For example,

(4) At length, it was over, the meal. (5) Mary received it, the present. (6) They are all the same, these politicians.

1.2 Research Objectives and Significance

Language is the major way for people to output information in daily exchange. The forms of language are of a wide variety, but why do people select RD as their information carrier among so many linguistic choices available? This thought-provoking question drives the author to take RD in Chinese as the research topic, which is committed to achieving the following four objectives.

First of all, it is going to provide a unified definition of Chinese RD construction in distinction from some similar terms, such as afterthought and incrementation. Secondly,the linguistic characteristics of Chinese RD construction in the form will be revealed, including syntactic and prosodic properties. Thirdly, the linguistic characteristics of Chinese RD construction in meaning will be expounded, including semantic characteristics, information structure, and pragmatic functions. Fourthly, it will explore cognitive motivations for the process in producing Chinese RDs.

This thesis seeks to achieve significance in three respects, which are of pragmatical and little theoretical value. Firstly, this thesis aims to enrich studies on Chinese RD construction. In the field of dislocation, a sizable portion of the research is about the counterpart of RD, namely, left dislocation (LD), while leaving RD in a rather obscure position. Furthermore, considerable efforts are made on English RD so that research on Chinese RD is still in the initial stage. Therefore, research on Chinese RD is needed.

Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 A Generative Approach to Right Dislocation

In the twentieth century, Saussure shifts the emphasis from language change to language description (Wen, 2012). Based on the descriptive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。