A Study Of English And Chinese Disjunctive Questions From The Perspective Of Dialogic Syntax

No matter in English or in Chinese, the disjunctive question is a very common language phenomenon. It attracts a lot of attention from various scholars because of its varied forms and language meanings. Though a disjunctive question is a kind of interrogative sentences, it does not only have the basic function of inquiry but also other non-inquiry functions. It can be explained not only as common, but also as special because this kind of sentence is always with specific pragmatic function; its composite structure also carries a wealth of discourse information. Learners will always encounter problems in the learning process of this kind of sentence.Due to the special nature of its form and function, scholars have conducted many studies on the disjunctive questions in English and Chinese. Of course, most of these studies tend to summarize and then analyze their usages. In addition, some scholars also try to analyze and explain it from the aspect of cognitive metonymy and grammaticalisation. But that’s only a small part and there still are a lot of aspects that the researchers have not studied; therefore, in the thesis it is still feasible if the author analyzes and explains this kind of sentences from the perspective of cognitive theory.The major theoretical framework in this thesis is the theory of dialogic syntax. It is a relatively new point of view for the researchers to analyze and explain the features and the pragmatic significance of disjunctive questions in English and Chinese. The theory of dialogic syntax is a relatively new cognitive linguistic theory proposed by John Du Bios. The theory can not only be used to study the structural characteristics of the disjunctive questions, and at the same time, the theory also combines form with function, so the theory has strong vitality.In this thesis, the author has found that disjunctive questions in English and Chinese reflect the semantic features of dialogic resonance, dialogic reproduction and selection and conceptual contrast after analyzing a large number of linguistic data. On one hand, the structures of disjunctive question in English are the same as some of the structures of disjunctive question in English. On the other hand, the structures of disjunctive question in English are also different from those in Chinese. And the analysis of the differences is the most important part. When talking from the angle of function, English and Chinese disjunctive questions have two main kinds of functions i.e. inquiry function and non-inquiry function. The author also has found that the main reasons for the generating of these functions are context analogy and diagraph.In sum, in this thesis the author has collected and analyzed a large number of previous studies before the research is carried out. The author mainly uses the theory of dialogic syntax to analyze the English and Chinese disjunctive questions at the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels. And it also explains why its language functions are generated. The author hopes it will enrich the study of English and Chinese interrogatives.