An Iconic Study Of English Word Order

This paper discusses the nature of linguistic signs from a cognitive perspective. After talking about the relationship between arbitrariness and iconicity of linguistic signs, the author discusses the main principles of iconicity and attempts to make an iconic study of English word order.The present paper consists of four chapters apart from introduction and conclusion. In the first chapter, the author makes a brief review of researches on English word order both at home and abroad, the author gives a short account of the current researches on English word order from traditional linguistic perspectives and cognitive linguistic perspective. And the author comments and points out the limitations of the previous researches. Chapter Two introduces the trichotomous theory of signs proposed by the American philosopher C. S. Peirce and the present research methodology. Chapter Three, which brings forth new ideas, is the most important and difficult part in this paper. The author discusses English word order iconicity at two levels: the phrasal level and the syntactic level. At each level, I make an iconic study of English word order in detail after the discussion of each iconicity principle. Chapter Four discusses theoretical and practical implications of the present research.To sum up, this paper makes a thorough and systematic study of English word order in terms of iconicity. It explains and analyzes word order in terms of form, structure and cognition, which adds a new theoretical approach to the study of word order. This research cats new light on improving English learning and teaching as well as acquiring knowledge of foreign language.