Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background
At first, it is necessary to state the features of the English present progressive in order to conduct the future researches. The different definitions of “Aspect” have been presented by some linguists from different schools. Jespersen (1933) points out that “By the side of the simple tenses, we have in English expanded tense: ‘He is working/ He was working/ He has been working’. The chief usage of the expanded tenses is served as a frame round something else” (Leech, 2004; Scheffer, 1975). Zhang (1984: 45-47) argues that “aspect” is a grammatical category which indicates whether an action is happening or not. Two subcategories exist under the aspect: progressive aspect and perfective aspect. The progressive aspect implies that the action or state is ongoing during a period of time. The perfective aspect stresses the finished movement. The English language has two aspects: progressive aspect and perfective aspect. The English progressive (be + Ving) is one of the most important fields of linguistic inquiry. Hence, the researches about this structure mainly include the basic features and the different usage types.
In recent years, cognitive linguistics has been the focus of linguistic study both at home and abroad. Some linguistic issues that cannot be expounded by other linguistic theories can be explained quite well by cognitive linguistics. Comparatively speaking, the cognitive approach is a better choice because it reflects people’s cognitive processes. The English verbs can be divided into two basic aspectual classes by the grammatical behavior: the perfective verbs and the imperfective verbs (Langacker, 1987: 78-84). The perfective verbs can occur with the progressive rather than the simple present, while imperfective verbs do the opposite (Langacker, 2001: 255). Zheng (2008: 179-182) discusses that the essence of process of progressive aspect from the perspective of the figure-ground concept. She expounds the polysemy phenomenon of progressive aspect.
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1.2 Research Significances
Now that the scholars at home and abroad have made systematic researches for the English present progressive, there are detailed references for the following studies and the operability of the thesis.
As for the theoretical significances, this thesis utilizes the theories of the cognitive grammar, which provides an effective way to discuss the linguistic issues. The syntactic projects can be represented by it. The figure-ground theory and the construal theory illustrate the essence of the process of progressive aspect. The semantics problems also can be solved by it. For example, the metaphor theory and the prototype theory deal with the polysemy phenomenon. All these theories improve the ability of Cognitive Linguistics to express the new research questions.
As for the practical significances, the theories in cognitive grammar are applied in practice. The practical value of analyzing the English present progressive exists in the English Grammar Teaching and English Reading Teaching. First, by using the concepts of cognitive grammar, the cognitive mechanisms of the English present progressive are understood easily. And the English learners could bear the features of this structure in mind in order to improve the efficiency of English teaching and to develop the interest of English grammar learning. The basic semantics of the English present progressive have been discussed by applying the figure-ground theory. Now that there is a special sentence structure, the English present progressive would indicate extra meanings. Therefore, the readers can understand the idea of the text from the overall and the cognitive grammar theories reveal people’s cognitive laws and characteristics.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Study From the Perspective of Traditional Grammar
The English progressive, as an important grammatical category or central part of English grammar, has attracted a variety of linguists at home and abroad.
Traditional grammar refers to the language actually used and is based on the observation of real world usage. It is descriptive rather than prescribes a set of rules that speakers of a particular language should abide by. A large amount of scholars have studied the English present progressive from descriptive perspective and make a great contribution to the understanding of morphological, syntactic features of English present progressive. Some definitions of the English progressive are as follows.
According to Comrie (1976), “Aspect” is regarded as “different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation”. Concerning the question that what kind of verbs can be utilized in the progressive and what can not, he concludes that “the general rule seems to be that lexically stative verbs can be used non-statively and appear in progressive”. In addition, Comrie (1976) acknowledges that there exists “terminological, and conceptual confusion of tense and aspect”, which is reflected, for instance, in the usage by multiple grammars, especially by those pedagogical in nature and practical in self-description. These term tenses refer to combinations of different tenses and aspects such as the present progressive. And more descriptively-oriented grammarians employ terms such as compound tenses (Quirk et al. 1985: 189), composite tenses and periphrastic tenses (Binnick, 1991: 8).
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2.2 Study From the Perspective of Transformational-generative Grammar
Being a highly formalized way to language created by Chomsky in the 1950s, generative grammar regards language as an innate cognitive faculty and mainly focuses on the study of a set of rules and principles that are employed to explain the generation of languages.
Researchers have mainly concentrated on the syntactic status of English present progressive. Chomsky (1957) presents “in a finite clause, the lexical verbs can be accompanied by markings for the passive, the progressive, the perfect, or any combination thereof.” Each marking consists of two elements: a schematic verb (either “have” or “be”) and a participial inflection (“-ing” or “-ed”) on the following verbs. Though long noted, this dual marking has generally been taken as arbitrary and unprincipled. Chomsky (1957) thinks that the modals, tense, the perfect (“have + -ed”), the progressive (“be + -ing”), and the passive (“be + -ed”) are taken together as constituting the English auxiliary system. Chen (2005:15-19) expounds the definition of progressive: “Prog [Φ] is true at an instant, if and only if [Φ] is true at every instant in some open interval containing.” Obviously, this is a lopsided view. And it does not suit for the telic situation, but atelic situation. Dowty (1979) introduces his analysis into a deontic modal component in the form of inertia worlds, the set of worlds in which an event referred to by means of a progressive predicate can continue uninterrupted. Dowty’s interval-semantic approach, for instance, the progressive is analyzed as a modal operator, yet one of “deontic necessity” rather than “epistemic contingency”. His proposal has given rise to a large variety of formal semantic studies on the English progressive (Landman, 1992; Asher, 1992; Portner, 1998). #p#分页标题#e#
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Chapter Three Theoretical Framework ............................................... 21
3.1 Bounding Theory ........................................ 21
3.1.1 Bounding ...................................... 21
3.1.2 Debounding ................................ 23
Chapter Four Analysis of the Cognitive Mechanisms of the English Present Progressive ..................................... 39
4.1 Bounding and Debounding ................................... 39
4.1.1 Classification of Verbs in Cognitive Grammar ............................. 39
4.1.2 Transformation from Perfective Process to Imperfective Process .................. 42
Chapter Five Conclusion .................................... 73
5.1 Major Findings ....................................... 73
5.2 Limitations and Implications ....................... 74
Chapter Four Analysis of the Cognitive Mechanisms of the English Present Progressive
4.1 Bounding and Debounding
Bounding theory reveals the essence feature about the people’s cognition and observation of the objects of the world. Hence, this characteristic can also be applied in the cognition of linguistic construction. Langacker (1987a: 68) divides the meaning expressed by the linguistic constructions into nominal and relationship. The latter one can be classified into two forms: one is non-temporal relationship explained by preposition and adjective, the other is temporal relationship or action process expressed by verb. What is related to this thesis is that the bounding and debounding of the action process or the temporal relationship. For example: “jump”, “kick”, “sneeze” and “cough” (Qiu, 2011: 128-131).
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Chapter Five Conclusion
5.1 Major Findings
This study has explicated the cognitive mechanisms of the English present progressive construction from the perspective of cognitive grammar. Because the thesis is in the framework of cognitive grammar, therefore, every chapter focuses on this theme and presents related content.
Chapter one demonstrates the research background, research questions, research significances, and research methodology, the organization of the thesis as well. In these subsections, the cognitive mechanisms are the clues throughout the content.
Chapter two is the literature review of the previous studies, which includes four main research perspectives: traditional grammar study describes the definitions of “tense and aspect” from different scholars; transformational-generative grammar study discusses the syntactic features of it; functional grammar study tells us the essence of the semantics of progressive; cognitive grammar study researches the semantics and cognitive schemas of the present progressive.
Chapter three mainly provides the theoretical framework of this study. This section firstly introduces the bounding theory. Secondly, this part illustrates the construal theory. Lastly, it offers the grounding theory.
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