Mental Space Theory And Lexical-Ambiguity Sentences

The aim of mental space theory which is proposed by Fauconnier is explaining the construction of the natural language meaning. In this dissertation, the theory is used to study the cognitive psychological processes of forming, understanding, disambiguating of ambiguous sentences. There are lots of reasons to produce ambiguous sentences. Ambiguous sentences often result from polysemy, homynymy and different construes of a word structure. These ambiguous sentences are defined as lexical-ambiguity sentences in this thesis. Based on some conventional researches, a new dynamic point of view to study lexical-ambiguity sentences by means of mental space theory is firstly used in the thesis. The view suggests that a lexical-ambiguity sentence is not only a linguistic phenomenon but also a cognitive one. In terms of research method, lexical-ambiguity sentences are studied with the mental space for background; and the cognitive psychological processes of their being arisen from lexical ambiguity are dynamically explained. In terms of theoretical study, mental space theory and its developmental theory (conceptual blending theory) are introduced and discussed; such mental space theories as ID principle, infinite interpretation principle, finite interpretation principle and identified principle are especially introduced in detail and further studied. Based on these principles, the cognitive psychological processes of forming, understanding, disambiguating of lexical-ambiguity sentences are studied and explained. Meanwhile, reasons to produce lexical-ambiguity sentences are studied; phenomena of lexical-ambiguity sentences are revealed; methods of disambiguation are summarized; and results from this thesis are applied to English reading.