Chinese College Students' Prototypical Exemplars On Ten Categories And Their Cognitive Analysis

Categorization is a fundamental concept in the field of cognitive linguistics. The study of categorization may date back to Aristotle, and his statement on category, normally referred to as "the Classical Approach to Category", which was accepted by most scholars.Based on the study of GAME, Wittgenstein found that the boundary of a category is not clear-cut; the category may be divided into the center and the peripheral and then the membership of a category is not same. Thus, he proposed the terminology of "family resemblance" for the explanation of the radial category. What Wittgenstein stated lay the foundation for the prototype theory. Many scholars have conducted research on the category theory since him.Berlin & Kay, for example, found that color terms have central and peripheral parts and that the boundary is fuzzy. Labov also concluded that the boundary of a category is fuzzy through his experiment. Rosen, based on the studies mentioned and several experiments she made, proposed a well-known theory: the prototype theory.After the comparison and study of the classical approach to category and the prototype theory, it was found that in explaining some social phenomena, the prototype theory is better than the classical one. Illuminated by experiments made by Rosch, Battig and Montague, the present author conducted an experiment with the participation of 307 college students attending eight universities in China. As far as the present author knew, this was the first time this approach was used in China. Based on the data, it was found that the prototype theory could be verified. What the present author has found is as follows:1. The best exemplars (or prototypical exemplars) of the ten categories of Chinese college students can be identified.2. Chinese students, like American students, mainly had their homes as the backdrop, when they were completing the questionnaires.3. What Rosch concluded from her study can also be verified from the experiment.4. Sometimes the classification of categories by Chinese and American students is different.5. The Theory of Basic Level of category can be verified by this study.6. The degree of a subject's familiarity, the location he inhabits and his experience are vital in the development of categorization.7. The spatial factor has a salient influence on informants and items that are adjacent to each other tend to be recalled easily.8. The semantic extension of prototypical categories takes the form of a combination of radiation and concatenation.It is possible to see that, not only prototype theory, but also Embodied Philosophy is verified by this study.