Abstract：Word order has been the focus in linguistic study for a long time. In spite of the traditional study on its description and classification within language from various aspects, its correspondence with the outer factors was overlooked. The cognitive linguistics, emerging in 1980s, asserts that, there exists an inextricable linking between the language and the cognition, and the forming, learning, as well as the application of language must be explained through human’s cognition. Base on which, the iconicity theory in cognitive linguistics, claiming the natural relations between one’s conceptual or experiential structure and the language structure, provides the study on English and Chinese word order with a new perspective. According to the principle, word order, rather than being in utter disorder without rule to observe, is motivated with its inherent rules and principles which mirror the thinking mode and cognitive pattern of human beings. This essay, under the guidance of iconicity theory, with English and Chinese word order as its studying object, makes a comparative analysis in English and Chinese word order at the phrasal syntactic level, accordingly, discovers the similarities and differences of the 2 peoples with regard to thinking mode, cultural attitude and cognitive style, and discloses the mystery of human’s cognition. It can be said that the approach from iconicity theory is the supplement to the previous studies with its improvement. In addition, the study also contributes to the foreign language teaching and language comprehension due to the fact that it can alleviate the burden of memorizing and raise the rate of processing information.

Keywords: Word Order; Iconicity Theory; Cognitive Linguistics; a Comparison between English and Chinese

Contents

摘要

Abstract

Chapter 1 Introduction-1

1.1 Motivation for the study-1

1.2 Purposes of the study-1

1.3 Organization of the study-1

Chapter 2 Iconicity theory and its principles-3

2.1 The development of iconicity theory-3

2.2 The definition of iconicity theory-4

2.3 The principles of iconicity theory-4

2.3.1 The principle of proximity iconicity-4

2.3.2 The principle of sequence iconicity-4

2.3.3 The principle of quantity iconicity-5

2.3.4 The principle of topic iconicity-5

Chapter 3 A comparative study on the word order of English and Chinese in terms of iconicity-7

3.1 The word order of English and Chinese at the phrasel level-7

3.1.1 The word order of English and Chinese in linguisiitic freezes-7

3.1.1.1 The expression of sequence iconicity in linguistic freezes-7

3.1.1.2 The expression of proximity iconicity in linguistic freezes-7

3.1.1.3 The expression of cultural iconicity in linguistic freezes-8

3.1.2The word order of English and Chinese in multiple pre-modifiers-9

3.2 The word order of English and Chinese at the syntactic level-10

3.2.1 The principle of sequence iconicity at the syntactic level-11

3.2.1.1 the principle of temporal sequence-11

3.2.1.2 the principle of spatial sequence-12

3.2.2 The principle of quantity iconicity at the syntactic level-14

3.2.3 The principle of topic iconicity at the syntactic level-15

Chapter 4 Conclusion-17

4.1 The summary of this paper-17

4.2 The practical significance of the study in foreign language learning and teaching-17

References-19

Acknowledgements-20