A Cognitive Study Of English And Chinese Denominal Verbs From The Perspective Of Metonymy

Denominal verb is a common linguistic phenomenon in many different languages. It is considered as a means of word formation by which a word of one certain word-class is converted into a word of another word-class without the addition of any affix in English. While in Chinese, denominal verb is often treated as a rhetoric device for some specific rhetoric effects. Therefore, there has always been a hot subject in the field of linguistic research. However, most of the previous researches analyze denominal verb from the perspective of language itself and pragmatics. As the development of cognitive linguistic, the producing and understanding of cognitive mechanism of denominal verb are put in the peak of denominal verb analysis.This dissertation aims to explore English and Chinese denominal verbs within the theoretical foundation:cognitive metonymy based on the previous studies of denominal verbs. To be exact, we make a comparison and contrast of the differences and similarities between430English and430Chinese denominal verbs at the very beginning, followed by the motivation behind this language phenomenon from cognitive metonymy, in order to prove that metonymy is the cognitive foundation of the producing and understanding of denominal verbs, thus the application of metonymy to explaining the operational mechanism of denominal verb is carried out.This dissertation is composed of five chapters. Chapter one is an introduction of this study which is subdivided into four parts:objectives of the study, background of the study, methodology and data collection and the organization of this thesis. Chapter two introduces a literature review of the previous studies of English and Chinese denominal verbs by researchers home and abroad. Chapter three discusses cognitive metonymy, the theoretical foundation, from three aspects, including cognitive definition of metonymy, typology of metonymy and operational mechanism of metonymy. Chapter four, the essential chapter in this dissertation, makes a contrastive study between English and Chinese denominal verbs according to the classifications of denominal verbs by Clark&Clark and Dirven; analyzes the cognitive motivation of denominal verbs to prove that metonymy is the cognitive foundation of denominal verb; illustrate the cognitive operational mechanism of denominal verb by adopting the operational mechanism of metonymy in light of cognitive constraints of denominal verb. Chapter five is the conclusion of this whole thesis. Specifically speaking, the major findings, limitations as well as some suggestions for further researches are given.In a word, after the comprehensive exploration of metonymic mechanism of Chinese and English denominal verb, motivation and constraints, we can prove that denominal verb is not just a linguistic phenomenon, but also the reflection of people's metonymic mode of thinking.