The Study And Cognitive Explanation On The Mutual Selectivity Of Classifier-Noun Combinations

Classifier is one of the important and outstanding characters of Chinese language and even the whole Sino-Tibetan system. Study on classifier began comparingly late, and been ignored for its simple form during the period of formal grammar. Since these ten years, with the semantic and cognitive studies spurring, its unique value comes out and becomes the hot topic of Chinese language research. However, the analysis on the using regulation and internal character is still far from satisfaction. The characters of words can only appear in the structures, while study on Classifier-Noun structure just begins.Classifier can be divided in two parts, nominal classifier and verbal classifier, consulting its distribution and function. Nominal classifier is the main part. The paper studies the combinatorial relationship between nominal classifiers and nouns, based on the previous studies and correlated theories in both home and abroad, trying to describe and explain the influential factors on the structure, and to set up a dynamic mutual-selective system of classifiers and nouns.The paper is built on the theory of the mutual selectivity of syntax and semantics and cognitive theory.The whole paper consists of eleven chapters, and the first part is made up of the first three chapters, the theorial basis of holistic study. They mainly deal with a) an illustration of outstanding theorial significance and practical value. b) an overview of Chinese classifier-noun structure study and a view of the outlook, aimed taking lessons from previous studies and focalizing our study down to earth. c) carding the sorts of classifiers, analyzing the lack of previous sorting, submitting the opinion of multiple-standard sorting method, and emphasizing the semantic standard sorting method and its result. These are the premise of the further discuss.The second part consists of the chapters 4, 5, discussing the leading status of nouns and the anti-restricting effect of classifiers in the classifier-noun structures. This is the theorial foundation of the whole study, mainly to build a theorial frame of multi-selectivity between nouns and classifiers. The paper believes that the combination of classifiers and nouns is not so called 'established by usages' but a mutual selectivity on the basis of semantic coherence principle. The complex influential factors always limit "quantity" on the meaning of nouns from certain view, which stands a lead in the combination. A word that can be a classifier is a projecting character of the noun, or build an association with "quantity" according to certain image, including quantity factors, the way things hold the space, the types and patterns, the polysemy factors, speaker's mental emphasis and mood, and the colloquial demands. This is the representation of cognitive in the language system. Classifiers will influence nouns meanwhile, including detailing the meaning of nouns, dividing meaning items of nouns, specializing noun sorts and enriching the noun meaning. This kind of influence is not fixed but occasional. As a whole, the mutual selectivity of classifier and noun exists in a dynamic net, with explainable combination rules. This is also the premise of our discussion on the relationship of classifier-noun combination.the third part is composed of chapter6,7 and 8, focus on the concrete analyses of the internal regulation of classifier-noun combination from the view of cognitive theory, discussing the...