Profiling And A Cognitive Study On Le (了)

With the development and prevailing of Cognitive Linguistics, the cognitive theories and approaches provide us the new trend for the studies of language.Based on the principle of Profiling, this dissertation conducts a cognitive study on Le with the aim of revealing the law between the grammatical structure and the cognitive structure of Le, and also showing the fact that the internal mechanism is the determining factor to explain the linguistic phenomena about Le. Furthermore, through the present study, this dissertation wants to provide a new angle for re-cognition of Le.Profiling is described as the process of assigning prominence to certain elements of a scene. It is much determined by the individual's psychological viewing arrangement and attention distribution in the certain cognitive scope. So viewing arrangement, attention and scope are the most important parameters closely related to profiling. In cognitive linguistics, Figure and Ground are the main mode of operation for profiling. As regard to Ground, it is generally used as the "reference point" to provide the viewing platform, location, path direction for figure with its grounding functions.This dissertation employs the principle of profiling combining with its main parameters of viewing arrangement, windowing of attention and scope to explore the grammatical meanings and the ambiguities of Le at the respects of confirming Le as the tense-aspect marker, confirming Le as the symbol of focus and explaining the ambiguities of Le. Le is put in the composite structure of Y=X+Le to observe its profiling functions. Le is looked at as the "reference point" to provide the viewing platform, location, path direction for its profiled targets.