| Research Abstract |
In developing the theory of Integrated Functional Grammar, which enables us to handle various aspects of grammatical phenomena in an integrated manner, relationships between grammatical structure and the cognitive mechanism were explored. Grammatical phenomena selected for investigations were applicatives and benefactives.
In developing a cognitive approach to voice phenomena, the correlation between the hierarchy of grammatical relations--namely, Subject > Direct Object > Indirect Object--and the cognitive status of the event participants was hypothesized with the assumption that the hierarchy stands for the differences in the cognitive status of event participants. According to this approach, voice is defined as alterations in the cognitive status of event participants. Both applicatives, which code locations, instruments, etc. as direct objects rather than as oblique objects, and benefactives, which code beneficiaries either as direct objects or indirect objects can be approached fro
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m the same angle, and the present study has made clear the cognitive mechanism responsible for the structures underlying these expressions.
An important consideration in dealing with the constructions in question is that they do not yield grammatical forms in a uniform manner ; some are grammatical, while others are ungrammatical, but there a lot of intermediate expressions that lie between these two extremes. This means that a certain schema exists between the situations apprehended and the corresponding expressions such that when the situations match the schema perfectly, well-formed expressions result, while when there is a mismatch of different degrees, ambiguous expression results.
The present study proposes the transitive structure and the 'give' construction as schemata for applicatives and benefactives, respectively, and clarifies the nature of these constructions.
The present study argues that schemata mediate between the speaker and the situations to be apprehended and that this process is not very different from that found in natural categorizations of objects. If this view is correct, then, contrary to the Chomskyan view, grammatical structure is intimately connected with general cognition. Less
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