Rheme and Dicent Sign:Revisiting the Clause Focus in Predication
Cognitive linguistics holds that subject is parallel to entity and focus while object background while functional linguistics thinks that focus is new infor-mation and appears in predicate.The focus-background argument of cogni-tive linguistics has not drawn extensive attention,hindering the cognitive lin-guistic research.This paper presents Charles Peirce's"rheme-dicent sign"theory,revisits it,and agrees to the idea that focus is subordinate to back-ground,which cannot be altered regardless of conversion."Focus"is closely linked to pragmatics,and there should be one focus only in a clause.Lin-guistic cognition must proceed from the physical space concept of entity to the concept of mental space.Based on the above theory and according to the"theme and dicent sign"theory of semiotics we proved that the clause focus exists in predicate,a main item(subject)can have multiple dicent signs(predicates),predication can only explain partial content of the topic,and the main item is the background of dicent sign.When the main item and subject are regarded as focus,the relevant background comes from outside the clause.
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