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A Multi-dimensional Study on the Pragmatic Functions of Generic Sentences

Author: ZhangLei
Tutor: YaoShuangYun
School: Central China Normal University
Course: Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Keywords: The generic sentence pragmatic functions the Small Triangle Theory Stance Genre
CLC: H030
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2011
Downloads: 120
Quote: 1
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Abstract

The generic issue has always been the focus of attention within linguistic domain, thus the generic sentence has gained increasing attention in recent years. The past studies on the generic sentence from different perspectives have made great achievements, yet there’s still room to make improvements. This present thesis attempts to make a systemic analysis of the generic sentence on the basis of the theory of the Small Triangle Hypothesis, the Stance Theory and the Genre Theory.Firstly, the Small Triangle Theory is introduced to study the syntactic forms as well as the semantic meaning and the pragmatic effect of the generic sentence. The conclusions are:(1) Syntactically, the generic sentence is composed of the generic subject and the attribute predicate. The generic sentence can be divided into the verbal sentence with a single object, the "shi" sentence, the "you" sentence and the series verb sentence. (2) Semantically, the generic sentence expresses the general attributes and shows the law and characteristics of the things of the same category. (3) Pragmatically, the generic sentence is a "special judgment" to meet a specific pragmatic need.Secondly, this thesis analyses the pragmatic functions of the generic sentence from the stance perspective. It examines the realizations and uncovers the internal mechanism of the stance of the generic sentence. It demonstrates that the generic sentence expresses the stance through "the generic subject" and "the attribute predicate". Specifically, the generic subject expresses the personal stance, the interactive stance, and the socio-cultural stance through its special mechanism of "generalization". The attribute predicate help realize the stance through stative verbs as "shi" (be) and "juyou" (have) and the modal verbs like "yinggai" (should) and "bixu" (must).Lastly, this thesis investigates the pragmatic function of the generic sentence within the register theory. It is found that the generic sentence can be divided into three types: the descriptive generic sentence, the directive generic sentence and the commentary generic sentence. The descriptive generic sentence occurs in scientific and technological discourse, the directive generic sentence occurs in legal discourse and the commentary generic sentence occurs in political discourse. The distribution of the generic sentence displays remarkable disparity in different registers. Languages prove that the generic sentence has the function of describing and stipulating the common characteristics of the entities Therefore the generic sentence can be defined as a sentence which concludes, evaluates and stipulates certain characteristics of a certain subject. This definition helps us have a deep and thorough the syntactic features and pragmatic function.

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CLC: > Language, writing > Linguistics > Semantics,pragmatics,lexicology, meaning school > Semantics, pragmatics
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