A Study Of Chinese Complex Sentences From The Perspective Of Iconicity

A Chinese complex sentence is formed by joining two or more simple sentences that are closely related in meaning and structure together.In the 1980 s,the researches on it mainly manifested in the following aspects: First,studying the modern Chinese complex sentences by combining their logical semantics,the quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis;Second,exploring their feature from the perspectives such as grammar,rhetoric,psychology,semantics,pragmatics and other multiple aspects,which are the main features of the Chinese complex sentences in the new period.The iconicity is an important theory of cognitive linguistics.It suggests that,the language structure is the product in the process that human perceives the world.It attempts to reveal the direct mapping relationship between the language structure and human experience.It believes that the languages of human,directly or indirectly,imitate the temporal or spatial structure of the behaviors that the human beings hold in natural environment,and also,imitate the various temporal and spatial relations between the countless things in nature.Therefore,with the gradual expansion and growth of theory of iconicity,people began to pay attention to the research for the Chinese complex sentence.Because previous studies have had this or that kind of problem of the Chinese complex sentence,the author decide to change the former researching perspective.It’s start going on our study from the theoretical aspect of the iconicity of language in cognitive language.The author hold that Chinese is a language that lacks for morphological marker.However,it is the language with a long history.And up till now,it also maintains infinite vitality.So Chinese(just like English)is a language that can satisfy the requirement for human making cognition towards the worlds,and express the world they have perceived.The complex sentence of Chinese is the same as the English complex sentence,which can be used to express the various complicated relations in the world that they have recognized.So how does the complicated relation within the Chinese complex sentence manifest itself? The author ensure that it is achieved through the iconicity of syntax.Therefore,based on the four basic principles of syntactic iconicity,this thesis analyzes the main complex sentence types of Chinese based on the Chinese complex sentence classification system proposed by Mr.Xing Fuyi.The study shows that: the Chinese complex sentences,whether they are linked by the explicit conjunction words or not,they all follow the principles of the syntactic iconicity.It is obvious that the various complicated relations in Chinese complex sentence without explicit conjunction words must be expressed through the iconicity,which represents the importance of the order of the clause in the Chinese complex sentence.For example,in natural world,the causality in view of time represents itself that the cause must be prior to the effect.So the clause for cause must be placed in the former,and then comes the clause for result.If the word order was disrupted,the logic relation of the complex changes correspondingly.It is the typical reflection of the syntactic iconicity.The Chinese complex sentence that is linked by explicit conjunction word also shows the same syntactic iconicity.It lies in that the conjunction word of Chinese complex sentences belong to the frame structure,which is derived from the imitation of the natural logic relation.Through the iconicity studies on the Chinese complex sentences,The author find that the Chinese complex sentence has a rather high syntactic iconicity.So the theoretical hypothesis of this study is proved to be right,which is the innovation of this thesis.Simultaneously,the study also expands the research approach and research ideas for Chinese complex sentence,and improves the previous studies on complex sentences.Studying the inner structures of the language from the external factors,which is helpful for us to understand the relationship between language and human thoughts.And it can further promote the development of complex sentences,and provides a more effective way for language learning,especially for the study of sentences.