This dissertation has made a comprehensive study on the existence of prominence asymmetry aspects in English structures in terms of Figure and Ground, which link opposites in cognition as a conceptual pair. The focus was on the correlation between the...
This dissertation has made a comprehensive study on the existence of prominence asymmetry aspects in English structures in terms of Figure and Ground, which link opposites in cognition as a conceptual pair. The focus was on the correlation between the conceptual structure of human cognition and the linguistic representation of English in the domain of semantics, syntax and discourse. In addition, this study provided a comparative study of English and Korean and attempted to classify their language types with respect to Figure and Ground.
This study adopted the two concepts which presented different characterizations of prominence asymmetry phenomena in English structures: Talmy's Figure (F) and Ground (G) organization and Langacker's trajector (tr) and landmark (lm) alignment, as the theoretical background.
To compensate the defect of Figure-Ground and trajector-landmark, this study attempted to redefine the concepts of Figure and Ground: Figure as a Mover, and Ground as a stationary scene, Source, Goal, and States. In this study, Figure is divided into two types, namely a tangible Figure (ontological Figure) and an intangible Figure (metaphorical Figure), likewise, is Ground divided into a tangible Ground and an intangible Ground.
With the new concepts of Figure and Ground, this study presented an integrated account of the relationship between semantic roles and Figure-Ground organization in conceptual structures. Agent, Theme, Instrument, or Experiencer can be integrated with Figure. Recipient, Beneficiary, Location, Source, or Goal can be integrated with Ground. Also, this study can not only explain the cognition flow of transfer verbs by establishing Ground 1 and Ground 2, but also provide the conceptualization of transfer verbs through Figure and Ground.
As for a noun phrase which is composed of NP1 and PP, NP1 can be conceptualized as Figure, NP2 within PP as Ground, and preposition of PP as Path. In addition, the holistic effect/partitive effect of locative verbs can be explained by Figure and Ground aspects. The figure-first argument in a locative alternation is interpreted as a partitive effect, while the Ground-first argument is interpreted as a holistic effect.
Moreover, this study introduced a unified account of the relationship between the semantic structures and syntactic structures and provided an explanation of how Figure and Ground are represented in syntactic structures. We can divide syntactic components into Figure and Ground: a subject or an object serves as Figure, and a PP modifier or a subject/object complement, location, state, participles, or infinitives serves as Ground.
From the perspective of discourse, this study was devoted to demonstrating the interactions between the principle of Figure-Ground and the principles of information structure and manifesting what factors determine the information salience in the discourse. Information salience was suggested with two types of concepts: one is ‘Focus coherence’ and the other is ‘Cognitive familiarity’. Through the above explanation, this study ascertained that Figure and Ground concepts do exist in the discourse .
This study compared English and Korean in terms of Figure and Ground and explicated typological characteristics of the two languages. Through demonstrating the different characteristic patterns of English and Korean, lexicalized by systematic contrasts, English can be classified as a Figure-first language, whereas Korean can be seen as a Ground-first language.
The observations and findings presented in this dissertation could help understand the correlation between human cognitive ability and conceptual linguistic structures and explore some of the ways in which our conceptualizations of the world reflect language as well.
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