Conceptual Integration And Compound Nouns In English

Conceptual Integration Theory can be applied to the analysis of many linguistic or non-linguistic phenomena.It is also applied to the process of compounding.However,those researches usually focus on one aspect of compounding:syntactic,semantic or cognitive.And they are usually qualitative. Compounding is such a complex phenomenon that it is hard to demonstrate its process clearly from only one perspective.Based on the past research,this thesis provides a detailed analysis of compound nouns in English from the viewpoint of Conceptual Integration Theory with a view to finding their underlying cognitive motivation.In this analysis syntactic and semantic features are combined.First,5566 compound nouns are collected from Oxford Advanced Learners' English-Chinese Dictionary(sixth edition).The first word of every compound noun is one from the core vocabulary list(attached at the end of the above dictionary).Then,the compound nouns are divided into three categories:subordinative,attributive and coordinative.And every category is further divided into two subcategories:endocentric and exocentric. After that,every category is analyzed from the viewpoint of Conceptual Integration Theory.It is found that subordinative and attributive compound nouns have a simplex network.In contrast,coordinative compound nouns have either a mirror network in the case of endocentric ones or a double-scope network in the case of exocentric ones.Thus the cognitive motivation underlying these compound nouns and the statistical possibilities of each case are made clear.Furthermore,this paper finds that there are approximately fifteen ways of combination between the two constituents of a n+n compound noun.And it discovers the internal predicate-argument structure underlying a v+adv compound noun.Thus,people can get to know the complex cognitive motivation underlying compound nouns in English.