A Systemic Functional Study Of The Cognate Object Construction In English

Cognate object construction is a special language phenomenon in English. When an object is cognate with its previous verb on the lexical level, it tends to repeat the meaning of that verb, and such construction is called cognate object construction. Many scholars have made a lot of research for its syntax and semantics, among which there is few from the point of systemic functional linguistics. This dissertation concerns itself with a detailed study of the cognate object construction from a systemic functional perspective, In the past, the linguists either treat cognate object as argument or regard it as adjunct. Both of them have shortcomings. Thanks to Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL hereafter) and Fawcett’s Cardiff Grammar, we find a new solution to analyze this language phenomenon. That is, it is more convincing to treat the cognate object as Main Verb Extension (MEx).The theoretical framework of this dissertation is based on Halliday’s SFL theory, especially the Cardiff Grammar. Till today, SFL has grown into several models, such as the Sydney model, the Cardiff model, the Madrid model as well as the Notting-ham model, among which the Sydney Grammar and the Cardiff Grammar are main models. There is no doubt that SFL is a comprehensive, explanatory, functional, and systemic theory. Meanwhile, it is worth to mention the Cardiff Grammar, the theory founded by Fawcett who is working at the Cardiff University. To some extent, the Cardiff Grammar not only extends but also simplifies the Sydney Grammar. The key innovation of it is to improve the lexicogrammar part of Halliday’s SFL and the MEx is one of these innovations, which offers much help in this study.The whole dissertation consists of five parts. Chapter 1 is the introduction part, providing a general overview about the main point. It introduces the rationale, objectives and research questions, data and methodology, etc. The definition and features of cognate object construction are also presented. Chapter 2 provides a brief literature review of the previous studies on cognate object construction, mainly including the traditional approach, transformational-Generative approach, corpus-based approaeh. In each approach, the linguists deal with cognate object construction from different perspectives, thus providing references for the following study. Chapter 3 mainly deals with the theoretical framework of this present study. Chapter 4 explores the cognate object construction in SFL in great details. This is the core part of this dissertation. The last chapter is the summarizing and concluding part of the whole dissertation, which restates the main arguments of this dissertation.The data used in this dissertation are mainly collected by observation. On the other hand, because of the fact that the research questions are what, how and why instead of how often, how much, the research method adopted in this dissertation is qualitative, descriptive, and explanatory. All of these help ensure the conclusion of this research about cognate object construction is relatively scientific and reasonable.