A Cognitive Approach To The Generic Reference Of Proper Nouns

This thesis aims to make an investigation of proper nouns with generic reference inboth English and Chinese. The generic reference of proper nouns is a special but commonlanguage phenomenon, which has the characteristics of its own. Originally, a proper noun thathas the feature of uniqueness specifically designates a person, a place, an organization, aninstitution and so forth. However, lots of them have generic reference right now，namely aproper noun could refer to the whole type of entities. For instance,“伯乐” and “包公” inChinese，Hamlet and Scrooge in English, they respectively denote the person who is good attelling the good or bad horses in the Spring and Autumn Period, the upright official known forhis stressing the dignity of law in the Northern Song Dynasty, the hero of a tragedyShakespeare’s works with the same name and the male protagonist who is stingy in CharlesDickens’ novella A Christmas Carol, respectively. Now they have the meanings of a talentscout, an honest and upright official, an anxious and indecisive person and a person who hatesspending money, all of which have generic reference. Most of the studies of generic referenceconcentrate on some forms of common nouns such as bare nouns, plural nouns, a+noun, etc.,and the phenomenon that the reference of proper nouns shifts from the specific to genericlacks investigation. Moreover, the previous studies of proper nouns are mainly conductedfrom perspectives of philosophy, semantics, pragmatics, and few researches have focused onthe operational mechanism of the generic reference of them. Hence, our present study intendsto make a systemic analysis of proper nouns with generic reference from cognitive approach.Jackendoff&Ray’s conceptual semantics and Radden&Kovesces’s metonymy theory will be applied to interpret the semantic basis and operational mechanism of this phenomenonrespectively.This thesis makes investigations of the semantic basis of proper nouns with genericreference. The concept of a proper noun includes both a [TOKEN] concept and a [TYPE]concept. The shift of proper nouns from specific reference to generic reference depends on theability to categorization, that is, the proper noun can not only express the [TOKEN] conceptbut also the [TYPE] concept or we can say the unification of the two concepts. The duality ofthe conceptual structures of a proper noun serves as the semantic basis of this phenomenon.Then, this thesis discusses the classifications of the generic reference of proper nouns.This study, based on the analysis on the data collected in both English and Chinese, classifiesthis phenomenon into six types of generic reference according to the relations of proper nounsand their referents: the entity-property, the producer-product, the place-product, theplace-event, the place-institution, and the control generic reference. Besides, the role ofcontext consisting of both cultural context and situational context are also analyzed in theclassifications of the generic reference of proper nouns. Some of the six types are mainlycultural context-oriented, some are situational context-oriented and some both.Based on the analysis above, this thesis takes application of metonymy put forward byRadden&Kovesces(1999) to interpret the operational mechanism of this phenomenon. Twometonymies in Category-and-Property ICM occur to the entity-property generic reference; theproducer-product generic reference undergoes one metonymy in Production ICM; anothersubtype metonymic relationship in Production ICM occurs to the place-product genericreference; the place-event generic reference undergoes two metonymies in Location ICM andin Category-and-Member ICM; the place-institution generic reference undergoes onemetonymy in Location ICM; and the CONTROLLER FOR CONTROLLED metonymy occurs to thecontrol generic reference in Control ICM. This thesis consists of five parts:Chapter One is a general introduction that provides an overall panorama, in which thethesis expounds the scope, the necessity, research questions, and the purpose of this study. Italso introduces the methodology and theoretical basis adopted in this thesis.Chapter Two is the brief literature review of the previous researches of proper nounsfrom different perspectives and related studies of common nouns with generic reference. Thischapter tries to comment on their contributions as well as limitations. What’s more, the thesiswill put forward the research questions to be solved.Chapter Three is the theoretical framework of this paper, in which some fundamentaleffective theories adopted in this thesis will be elucidated, including the cognitive view ofsemantic basis of proper nouns with generic reference (Jackendoff and Ray,1983), and thetheory of metonymy proposed by Radden and Kovecses (1999).Chapter Four is the systematic analysis of the classifications of the generic reference ofproper nouns and the cognitive analysis of this phenomenon. Based on the observation of datacollection, the generic reference of proper nouns is divided into six types in accordance withthe relations of proper nouns and their referents. And the detailed analyses of the metonymicmechanisms of the six types of generic reference are also explored in this part.Chapter Five arrives at the conclusion of this thesis, the author mainly summarizes themain findings, limitations and implications of this study and future study perspectives.