| Anaphora is a common language phenomenon. It refers to a co-referential relationship on the surface of language. In other words, anaphora is the use of one expression to refer to the representation of another expression which appears in the same text. The first expression is called anaphor, the second antecedent. Anaphora can be divided into two types: direct anaphora and indirect anaphora. Our study is focused on indirect anaphora in English and Chinese discourse. Chen Ping(1987) divided anaphora into nominal anaphora, pronominal anaphora and zero anaphora. This study will follow Chen’s classification in its analysis of the metonymic motivation of indirect anaphora.The further development of cognitive linguistics shows that metonymy is a kind of mental mapping, which means understanding an entity through some prominent part of it. Lakoff & Johnson(1980) believe the nature of language is metonymic.Metonymy leads people to pay more attention to the prominent part of language.Metonymy is a way of thinking which is widely used in people’s life. Also it is an important means to know the world. Metonymic thinking is a significant part of people’s daily thinking. So metonymy can be used to interpret indirect anaphora.This paper is a cognitive study of indirect anaphora under the theoretical framework of cognitive metonymy. The first chapter is a brief introduction of the significance of the study and the structure of the thesis. The second chapter introduces the definition and the related studies of anaphora. The third chapter offers the theoretical framework of this study, which highlights the referential point theory of Langacker, the idealized cognitive model of Lakoff, the metonymic mapping theory of Radden and K?vecses and the textual metonymy model of Al-sharafi. Chapter four is the main body of the thesis. The author tries to explain the use and understanding of nominal indirect anaphora, pronominal indirect anaphora and zero anaphora with cognitive metonymy. Chapter five is the conclusion of the whole paper.Through the research, it is found that there is an intrinsic relationship betweenindirect anaphora and metonymy. The metonymy-producing relationship is correspondent with the indirect anaphoric phenomenon. Cognitive metonymy provides a better ground for the explanation and interpretation of indirect anaphora. This paper is a deeper study of indirect anaphora which has expanded the application scope of cognitive metonymy. |
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