关键词: 心理世界, 物理世界, 语言世界, 行域, 知域, 言域

Abstract: The principle governing the choice between two sentence patterns in introducing different topics into a text is based on a correspondence among three worlds — the physical world, the mental world, and the linguistic world. More exactly, the correspondence between the physical world and the world of language is not direct but mediated by the mental world. And in the linguistic world there also exists a correspondence among three similar domains — the domain of acts, the domain of knowledge, and the domain of speech —as reflected in the meanings of conjunctions in compound sentences. In addition to correspondence the three domains are also connected by extension. The basic domain of acts becomes the domain of knowledge by extension, and further extends and becomes the domain of speech. Language has two characteristics which make the linguistic world contain a domain of speech within itself. One is the reflexivity of language by which language can be used to describe or refer to itself and the other is the illocutionary force of language like questioning, demanding, and promising, which can be produced just by uttering the relevant expressions.