2.3 Chinese Attributive Position Analysis in Cognitive
About the relationship between central word and modifiers in attributive structure and the word order relation of the internal different elements in special syntactic cognitive linguistics made update explanation through using information structure theory, similarity theory and so on. Liu Ningsheng discussed the cognitive function of attributive structure in Chinese. He thinks that the cognitive function of central word and modifiers is “goal object” and “reference object”. (1995) While “reference object” prior to “goal object” in word order, which determine the fact that modifiers are in front of central word. So the word order of attributive structure is fixed in Chinese. He thinks that whatever compound sentence or nominal noun phrase modification structure, they are all put in front of central word which reflects the coherence and regularity. This exploration of word order is really valuable, which make us hold a new insight for syntactic structure order in Chinese and added more powerful commentary method. However as Liu has seen, this principle can not be used to explain all the phenomenon of word order. It just reflects an overall trend and general structure.