| Writing is a complicated and creative cognitive activity.English writing especially manifests the English proficiency of Chinese EFL learners.English run-on sentences commonly reside in the syntactic and discourse levels of English writing produced by Chinese EFL learners.Grounded upon cognitive grammar,the CDS(current discourse space)is a kind of mental space,which lays the foundation for investigating English run-on sentences from the perspective of discourses.The previous studies of English run-on sentences pay more attention to error analysis from the aspect of second language acquisition.Some scholars mention that the subject factors of EFL learners constitute-a vital facet.Nevertheless,it hasn’t been made clear that what kind of cognitive relationships lies between English run-on sentences and the conceptualizers,namely,the EFL learners who perform the cognitive activity of English writing.Therefore,the thesis explores English run-on sentences produced by Chinese English majors from the angle of cognitive grammar so as to discover the cognitive types,dynamic discourse construction and underlying cognitive motivations of English run-on sentences.It is a complementary research to the previous studies.With the guidance of cognitive grammar,the thesis applies the CDS to analyze the language data produced by Chinese English majors extracted from CLEC(Chinese Learner English Corpus).Qualitative and quantitative methods are combined in the thesis to conduct the cognitive research on English run-on sentences.Initially,the research categorizes the cognitive types of English run-on sentences and demonstrates the distribution of the statistics quantitatively.Then,it furthers the exploration in a qualitative method by dint of portraying the distinctive ways that the dynamic discourse construction is realized in different types of English run-on sentences.Last,the thesis digs into the temporal and spatial features of English run-on sentences and investigates the potential cognitive motivations.It is found in the research that:(1)In accordance with the 177 valid sentences collected from CLEC,English run-on sentences produced by Chinese English majors encompass three major types,namely,repeated-traj ector pattern,partially repeated-traj ector pattern and nonrepeated-trajector pattern.The three types account for 20.90%,41.24%and 37.86%respectively.(2)On the basis of the preceding cognitive types,English run-on sentences vary in the ways that the dynamic discourse construction is realized.Repeated-trajector pattern realizes its dynamic discourse construction by centering on the same trajector.Partially repeated-trajector pattern possesses partial trajectors that repeat in a row,so its dynamic discourse construction is structured through the alternate appearance of the old and new information.Nonrepeated-trajector pattern is characterized with distinctive trajectors and these trajectors continuously input new information into the CDS,thus facilitating the flow of discourse.(3)The English run-on sentences produced by Chinese English majors manifest semantically related linear temporal features horizontally and disconnected spatial features vertically.The corresponding cognitive motivations underlying English run-on sentences can be demonstrated by the chain of reference point relationships and the access-and-activation model from the perspective of cognitive grammar.Based on cognitive grammar,the thesis expands the scope of the discourse research on English run-on sentences produced by Chinese English majors from a new angle.Meanwhile,it verifies the applicability and explanatory power of the discourse analysis from the aspect of cognitive grammar over second language acquisition.Additionally,the research is of benefit to the advanced development of domestic English teaching and learning. |
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