图形–背景理论下的英汉倒装句对比分析——以《沉睡之城》和BBC语料库为例

A Contrastive Analysis of English and Chinese Inverted Sentences from the Perspective of Figure-Ground Theory—A Case Study of The City of Sleep and the BBC Corpus

摘要: 英汉两种语言中都普遍存在倒装句这一语言现象。与常式句不同，倒装句的出现有其特定的语用动因。本文基于认知语言学中的图形–背景理论通过分析四类英汉倒装句中的图形、背景分布状况，以及信息、焦点的位置，进一步探讨这种分布所产生的语用目的。研究发现，在英语中，倒装句通常将新信息置于句末，强调句尾的图形部分，而汉语倒装句则常常将重要信息或新信息放在句首，突出句首的图形成分。这种分布情况反映了英语倒装句的语用目的是焦点化、情境设定和强调，而汉语倒装句则注重信息的突出和语气的表达。通过图形–背景理论的视角，本文揭示了倒装句作为一种语法结构变化的语用理据，如何通过改变句式实现不同的言语功能，反映了英语和汉语在认知模式和语言使用上的文化差异。

Abstract: Inversion is a common linguistic phenomenon in both English and Chinese. Unlike canonical sentence structures, inverted sentences arise from specific pragmatic motivations. Drawing upon Figure-Ground Theory in cognitive linguistics, this paper examines the distribution of figure and ground elements, as well as the placement of information and focus, in four types of English and Chinese inverted constructions, with the aim of further exploring the pragmatic functions generated by such distributions. The study finds that English inverted sentences generally place new information at the end of the sentence, thereby emphasizing the figure element in sentence-final position, whereas Chinese inverted sentences tend to place important or new information at the beginning of the sentence, highlighting the figure element in sentence-initial position. This distribution reflects the pragmatic purposes of English inversion, including focalization, scene-setting, and emphasis, while Chinese inversion primarily serves to foreground information and convey particular tones or attitudes. From the perspective of Figure-Ground Theory, this paper reveals the pragmatic motivations underlying inversion as a form of syntactic variation and demonstrates how different sentence patterns realize distinct communicative functions, thereby reflecting cultural differences in cognitive patterns and language use between English and Chinese.