A Cognitive Grammar Analysis Of Conversion Between Nouns And Verbs In Modern Chinese

Nouns and verbs are considered to be two universal grammatical categories, and they are opposed to each other in distribution. When a linguistic unit normally used as a noun occurs in the position of a verb, or vice versa, its lexical class changes. This is what is known as conversion in morphology. This dissertation focuses on conversion between nouns and verbs in modern Chinese.Previous studies of this phenomenon have concentrated on two areas. The first one is concerned with how to judge whether the lexical class of a linguistic unit has changed. In particular, this involves the nature of verbs that occur as subjects or objects in a clause, a controversial topic known as the issue of nominalization in Chinese linguistics. The other area is what motivates conversion between nouns and verbs and what mechanisms are responsible for it. Some researchers have begun to explore this area from perspectives of functional grammar and cognitive linguistics.Most previous studies, constrained by objectivist semantics, have ignored the role of general cognitive abilities in shaping linguistic structure and meaning. Most researchers have focused their attention on theoretical discussion without sufficient attention to corpus analysis. And the few studies on mechanisms of conversion have not offered a comprehensive description and explanation within a coherent framework. This dissertation has explored conversion between nouns and verbs in modern Chinese within the framework of Cognitive Grammar (CG), concentrating on five issues, including the nature of verbs in the position of subjects or objects, the"N de V"construction, transferred designation in nominalization, verbalization of nouns, and predicative nouns. We have made the following discoveries in our exploration.First, conceptual reification as a general cognitive ability is the fundamental mechanism responsible for nominalization of verbs in modern Chinese. Whether monosyllabic or disyllabic, a verb always profiles a process. And conceptual reification, working on component states of a process, operates on the conceptual level. Consequently, there is no link between nominalization and the number of syllables. Processes on the various levels of conceptual organization, from verbs, verb phrases to finite clauses, can all be reified as a thing. Their nominalizations can all be considered nouns in CG, their differences residing in degrees of symbolic complexity, specificity, entrenchment, and conventionalization.Secondly, reference-point abilities and conceptual autonomy are the most important factors for description and explanation of the"N de V"construction. This construction, like typical possessive constructions, can be analyzed as a reference-point structure whereby one entity is used as a reference point for accessing another. And a corpus-based survey indicates that nominalization of monosyllabic verbs in this construction is highly restricted, and this can be attributed to conceptual and stylistic factors. Besides, conceptual autonomy is the most important factor that affects the acceptability of this construction. The higher the degree of conceptual autonomy of a verb, the more likely its nominalization occurs in the construction. All intransitive verbs can occur in this structure precisely because they profile autonomous processes.Thirdly, conceptual metonymy is a fundamental factor in nominalization, serving to shift the profile of a process to various semantic roles that participate in the process. In terms of frequency of metonymic reference, movers and products are the most important roles, followed by agents, instruments, and quantity, while other semantic roles are rarely accessed via processes. A corpus analysis reveals that the previous theory based on prominence alone is not sufficient to account for metonymic reference in nominalization.Fourthly, conceptual metonymy also works in conversion of nouns to verbs, and various semantic roles exhibit considerable difference in frequency of conversion and acceptability of metonymy. Nouns designating instruments, products, and movers are frequently converted to verbs, compared with those designating other roles. In terms of cognitive processing, accessing a process via an agent or patient is not an effective or efficient strategy. Instrument nouns are especially important in conversion, most of them capable of referring to a process via metonymy. There are three factors that determine whether an instrument noun can be converted to a verb, namely, manipulability of an instrument, its similarity with other instruments, and affectedness of patient.Finally, nouns in Chinese have a dynamic nature if serving as predicates in a clause. And this nature can be attributed to subjectification and mental scanning. A conceptualizer mentally scans along an abstract path (i.e. scale), and arrives at a particular position on the path. Acceptability of clauses with predicative nouns correlates with degrees of salience of the path, which can be reinforced by a contrastive context.In previous studies of conversion between nouns and verbs in modern Chinese, linguists have made their observations from perspectives of various research paradigms. Naturally, this has led to numerous views and disputes. Whatever paradigm one is working within, one's description and explanation of this phenomenon must conform to reality of language. As this study indicates, a cognitive grammar analysis of conversion in Chinese will produce many new and interesting ideas and throw light on many traditional problems in Chinese.