Introduction
0.1 Background and Significance of the Current Study
The Quality-state sentence in this thesis are the kind of sentencesthat are called the middle sentences or middle constructions in English,which refer to sentences such as "The car drives quickly", "The booksells well" and "The meat cuts well", etc. This kind of sentences havebeen a hot research topic studied by many linguistic scholars from abroadand at home, and a variety of linguistic approaches with different theorieshave been devoted to it.Traditional grammar takes the sentences as "active form but passivemeaning" and other approaches takes this kind of sentence as the middlesentence or middle construction, or in middle voice. However, this thesisstill has some questions concerning the previous explanations of suchlanguage phenomenon.First, according to cognitive linguistics, meaning decides form anddifferent meanings have their corresponding forms, which can beexplained on the contrary, that is： If the form is different, then themeaning must be different. It is a fact that, as a grammatical category ofthe verb, voice in English owns its corresponding form, so, it is no doubtthat verb form of different voices should be in different meaning.
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0.2 Objectives of the Current Study
As a new linguistic science, cognitive linguistics is a furthercomplement and development of the traditional linguistics and can beused to explain many linguistic phenomena in both English and Chinese.This thesis aims to explore the quality-state sentence from the cognitiveperspective. According to cognitive linguistics, meaning appears beforegrammar, so the quality-state concept appears before the quality-statesentence in English. Cognitive laws such as conceptualization andcategorization play central role in the generation of the quality-stateconcept and the quality-state sentence in English.Then, according to the prototype theory in cognitive linguistics, anycategory is a prototype category which has its prototypical members andnon-prototypical ones. This thesis aims to focus the prototypes andnon-prototypes of the quality-state concepts and the prototypical andnon-prototypical quality-state sentences in English. The mechanism of theexpansion from the prototypical members to non-prototypical ones is alsoa focus of this thesis. From the analysis, people can understand the wholeknowledge of the quality-state sentence in English which includes; thegeneration and expansion of the quality-state concept in English, thegeneration and the expansion of the quality-state sentence in English, andthe mechanism of the expansion of the quality-state concept and thequality-state sentence in English.
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Chapter One Literature Review
1.1 Previous Studies on Problems Related to the Quality-stateSentence
In order to get a full understanding of what this thesis will talk about,in this part, the literature review of the related study will be introduced,which will be introduced from different approaches, they are: thetraditional grammar, the generative approach, the functional approach andthe cognitive approach. The traditional grammar here refers to the traditional grammarsystem. In traditional grammar, sentences of this kind are regarded assentences active form but passive in meaning.In the book The Advanced English Grammar written by Bo Bing(2000), he holds that voice is a kind of verb form, and is used to denotethe relation between the subject and the predicate in the sentence. Someintransitive verbs whose subjects are mainly things and can use togetherwith "can't" "won't" can express passive meaning. Si Lianhe (2013), points out that, in grammar, voice is determined bythe relation between the actions or state which is expresses by the verband its argument. When the subject is the agent or action-doer of the verb,the verb is in active voice; when the subject in the sentence is the patientor the target, the verb is in passive voice; when the subject is the patientof the action, but the verb is in active form, this kind of languagestructure is between the active form and the passive form, it is in middleform, the verb in the middle form is in middle voice. The meaning of thiskind of structure is active in form but passive in meaning.
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1.2 Comments on the Previous Studies
It is the fact that sentences such as "The car drives quickly." "Themeat cuts well." are paid much attention to by many linguists andscholars, and different explanations are made by different approaches.And all the previous studies on this issue have made great attribution forthe deep understanding of such kind of English language phenomenon.Traditional grammar takes the sentence as "active form with passivemeaning" and other approaches takes this kind of sentence as the middlesentence or middle construction, and in middle voice.Based on the analysis of the previous studies and a large number ofsentences of this kind, this thesis thinks that the quality-state sentence inmore appropriate to express this kind of sentence. First, according to theresearches we have made from the previous studies, we find that there is acommon point in analyzing this kind of sentence, which is: sentences ofthis kind don't denote a kind of event but express a kind of state. Fagan(1988:181-203) points out, the middle sentence doesn't denote a kind ofevent but describes a certain attribute of a thing. Xu Shenghuan(2002:441) holds that the basic feature of the middle sentence indicates akind of state, so, it tends to be stative. According to Xu Shenghuan(2002:439), grammatically, the middle sentence is expressed by thegrammatical structure "patient subject + intransitive verb + adverbialwhich indicate a kind of state", and semantically the middle sentence isweakened to express a kind of state or common features of an event, for itcan be transformed into TOUGH sentences which indicate a kind of state.
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Chapter Three The Quality-state Concept and Its Generation andExpansion.......... 31
3.1 The Quality-state Concept and Its Componential Elements ..........31
3.1.1 The Quality-state Concept ..........32
3.1.2 Componential Elements of the Quality-state Concept.......... 33
3.2 The Generation of the Quality-state Concept ..........35
3.2.1 Experiential Basis of the Quality-state Concept ..........36
3.2.2 Process of the Generation of the Quality-state Concept..... 38
3.3 The Expansion of the Quality- state Concept.......... 39
3.4 Summary ..........48
Chapter Four The Quality-state Sentence in English and ItsGeneration and Expansion.......... 51
4.1 The Quality-state Sentence in English and Its ComponentialElements.......... 51
4.1.1 The Quality-state Sentence in English.......... 52
4.1.2 Componential Elements of the Quality-state Sentence inEnglish.......... 52
4.2 The Generation of the Quality-state Sentence in English.......... 54
4.3 The Expansion of the Quality-state Sentence in English ..........60
4.4 Summary.......... 65
Chapter Four The Quality-state Sentence in English and Its Generation and Expansion
According to Langacker in Foundations of Cognitive Grammar,semantics plays a central role in the language, researches on the syntaxcan't be independent from the semantics, and the semantic structure isinfluenced by people's cognitive structure. So, all the sentence structureswe meet can't be understood independent from their semantics orconcepts. The quality-state sentence is the language reflection ofquality-state concept, the formation of the quality-state sentence is basedon the iconicity between the quality-state concepts and its representationof the concepts, which means the generation of the quality-state sentenceis the objective reflection of quality-state concept. This chapter aims tofind out what the quality-state sentence is, the generation of thequality-state sentence and the prototypes and non-prototypes of thequality-state sentence and their syntactic features.
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Conclusion
This thesis has made a detailed analysis of the quality-state sentencein English, which includes the generation and the expansion of thequality-state concept, and the prototypes and non-prototypes of thequality-state concept and their semantic features; the generation and theexpansion of the quality-state sentence in English, and the prototypes andnon-prototypes of the quality-state sentence and their syntactic features,the analysis of the cognitive mechanism of the expansion of thequality-state sentence is also made. Analyzed from the perspective ofcognitive linguistics, this thesis discussed the quality-state sentence inEnglish by using categorization, conceptualization and the prototypetheory. Then, the main findings will be showed in the second part.
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Reference (omitted)
