The cognitive-functional properties of English WH-dialogic constructions in discourse

Authors

  • Guocai Zeng College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Sichuan University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18063/fls.v1i1.1080

Keywords:

WH-dialogic constructions, event, schema-instance principle, cognitive model

Abstract

Within the theoretical frameworks of cognitive linguistics and cognitive construction grammar, this paper takes the pair of a WH-question and one of its answers in contemporary spoken English as the research object and regards such pairs as WH-dialogic constructions. In this study we construct an Event-based Schema-Instance Cognitive Model (ESI model) to analyze the cognitive-functional properties of this category of dialogic constructions. The discoursal expansion and textual cohesion in discourse achieved through the application of such dialogic constructions indicate that the usage of WH-dialogic constructions is one of the basic cognitive strategies for human beings to construe the objective world. 

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Published

2019-09-01

Issue

Vol 1, No 1: (Published)

Section

Original Articles

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