| Declaration | 第1-4页 |
| ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS | 第4-7页 |
| Abstract | 第7-8页 |
| 摘要 | 第8-9页 |
| Chapter One Introduction | 第9-12页 |
| Chapter Two Defining "Shi Focusing Construction" | 第12-21页 |
| ·Scope of our study | 第12-16页 |
| ·Why "shi focusing construction" | 第16-20页 |
| ·English it-clefts | 第16-17页 |
| ·Shi focusing construction and English it-clefts | 第17-20页 |
| ·Summary . | 第20-21页 |
| Chapter Three Aspects of Shi | 第21-33页 |
| ·A brief review of shi | 第21-25页 |
| ·Three approaches | 第21-23页 |
| ·Shi as a focus marker | 第21页 |
| ·Shi as a verb | 第21-23页 |
| ·Shi as an adverb | 第23页 |
| ·Our analysis | 第23-25页 |
| ·Our proposal: shi as a functional element | 第25-28页 |
| ·Shi as a focus marker—empirical & theoretical evidence | 第25-27页 |
| ·Empirical evidence | 第25-26页 |
| ·Theoretical evidence | 第26-27页 |
| ·Shi as a grammaticalized word | 第27-28页 |
| ·The historical development of shi | 第28-32页 |
| ·Wang (1958) | 第29页 |
| ·Sian (1986) | 第29-30页 |
| ·Xiao (2005) | 第30-32页 |
| ·Summary | 第32-33页 |
| Chapter Four Distribution of Shi and Structure of the Construction | 第33-52页 |
| ·Distribution of shi | 第33-42页 |
| ·Positions of shi: from semantic aspect | 第33-38页 |
| ·Positions of shi: from syntactic aspect | 第38-42页 |
| ·Sentential structure and split ComP hypothesis | 第42-51页 |
| ·Introduction to split ComP hypothesis | 第43-45页 |
| ·Applying split ComP hypothesis to shi focusing construction | 第45-51页 |
| ·Summary | 第51-52页 |
| Chapter Five Emphatic Stress in Shi Focusing Construction | 第52-63页 |
| ·A brief review of Lee (2005b) | 第52-57页 |
| ·Our analysis | 第57-62页 |
| ·Emphatic stress | 第58-60页 |
| ·Interaction of shi focusing and emphatic stress | 第60-62页 |
| ·Summary | 第62-63页 |
| Chapter Six Concluding Remarks | 第63-64页 |
| References | 第64-66页 |
