A Study Of Echo Questions From The Perspective Of Cognitive Grammar

This paper attempts to explore echo questions within the theoretical framework of cognitive grammar and belief-doubt hypothesis, aiming at making a reasonable and motivated explanation to the corresponding relationship between the form and meaning of echo questions and solving the problem how the syntactic feature symbolizes the semantic feature of echo questions. The previous studies of echo questions have been done from different perspectives. It's noted that their researches are mainly concerned with the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features of echo questions. However, as to the corresponding relationship between the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features, little has been done.This paper takes the standard echo questions as the object of the current study. It is hypothesized that there exists a corresponding relationship between the form and meaning of echo questions via BDH. In line with cognitive grammar, all linguistic units are symbolic in nature. A symbolic unit is bipolar, consisting of a semantic unit defining one pole and a phonological unit the other. Echo questions are closely connected with the previous utterances, and they can't exist on their own, or, independently without the prior utterances. Therefore, an echo question, as a grammatical construction, is composed of a prior utterance plus a question. In order to analyze how the syntactic feature symbolizes the semantic feature, the writer makes an analysis of the syntactic features on the basis of the classification and the semantic features including pragmatic features. It is discovered that the syntactic feature symbolizes the semantic feature via the speaker's epistemological state related to echo questions. By virtue of belief-doubt hypothesis, belief and doubt are the speaker's epistemological state related to echo questions. In line with BDH, the author attempts to establish EQ BDH: in an echo question, the speaker, at the time of the utterance, has some belief as well as some doubt about the proposition or some part of the proposition of the sentence. The speaker's belief is the prerequisite of his or her doubt. The speaker's doubt arises on his or her...