A Comparative Study Of Adverbial Conjunctions In Chinese And English From The Cognitive-Grammatical Perspective

Adverbial Conjunctions(ACs) are a special kind of words. They are provided with modifying function as well as connective function. They are not coordinated with such word classes as noun, verb, adjective, preposition and so on. Many scholars have studied them from different angles, such as the perspective of functional linguistics, comparative linguistics, traditional grammar and typology. However, few studies concerning ACs have been made from the perspective of cognitive linguistics.Langacker, in his great works Foundations of Cognitive Grammar(Volumes I and Volumes II), mentions that there exist a few theories within Cognitive Grammar, including Autonomy/Dependence Alignment, Symbolic Structures, Cognitive Construal, Categorization and Grammaticalization. Traditional grammar exists obvious shortcomings in defining word classes. Based on cognitive semantics, Cognitive Grammar defines major grammatical categories from the angle of concept, which provides a new way for studying words.This paper makes a comparative study of ACs in both Chinese and English from the perspective of Cognitive Grammar. Based on the Corpus of Center for Chinese Linguistics PKU and the Corpus of Contemporary American English, this paper analyzes the roles that ACs play at sentence or text level and the cognitive process of some typical ACs under the principle of Autonomy/Dependence Alignment and Cognitive Construal. Generally speaking, this thesis makes an attempt to answer four inseparable questions: 1.What is the cognitive definition of ACs? 2. How are ACs classified according to different domains? 3. What’s the role that ACs play at sentence or text level? 4. What are the similarities and differences between English ACs and Chinese ACs?Findings have been found in this paper. There are similarities and differences between English ACs and Chinese ACs. The syntactical positions of ACs in both English and Chinese are rather flexible. They can be put initially(before) or after the subject. When they are before the subject, they have stronger connective or cohesive function. Under this circumstance, they are often followed by comma, thus the tone of the whole sentence appears mitigating, and the connecting relationship between the preceding and the following is more protruded. Comparatively speaking, Chinese ACs are less agile than those in English. Structurally, they act as language units which are relatively independent. Semantically, the meaning of them has close relationship with that of the rest, and the two parts altogether form the entire meaning.We have naturally drawn out the conclusion that ACs are not only semantic words but also cognitive-oriented words by the analysis of them.This paper is helpful to broaden the scope to study ACs, useful to accelerate human’s cognitive process and to understand ACs more deeply, and meaningful to have a better understanding on language phenomenon.