A Study Of Meaning Generation Of N+N Compounds

The meaning generation of N+N compounds has been the study focus of scholarsboth at home and abroad for a long time. This paper regards the meaning generationof N+N compounds as a semantic-pragmatic issue which is not only related to themeanings of constituent nouns but also related to the change of linguisticenvironments. Therefore, this paper tries to study it from the perspective of RelevanceTheory by taking Chinese as linguistic data.This paper adopts case analysis approach. Linguistic data are collected fromCCL corpus (Center for Chinese Linguistics PKU corpus) for typological analysis.The study of this paper mainly includes two aspects: first, it explores theclassifications and semantic relations of N+N compounds; second, it analyzes themeaning generation of different kinds of N+N compounds under the guidance ofRelevance Theory. Based on the claim of Bloomfield on endocentric and exocentricconstruction, this paper assumes that all the N+N compounds are endocentricconstruction. Through examining their collocation with other linguistic units,especially quantifiers, this paper determines the number of their head nouns and thendivides them into subordinate N+N compounds (i.e. compounds that own one head)and coordinate N+N compounds (i.e. compounds that own two heads). Under theguidance of Relevance Theory, this paper studies the meaning generation of these twokinds of N+N compounds through detail case analysis. The study includes two parts:how semantic relevance is established and how linguistic environments restrict themeaning generation of N+N compounds. This provides basis for the classification ofsemantic relations in this paper. The Relevance Theory is based on a definition ofrelevance and two principles of relevance. This paper assumes that these twoprinciples guide people to interpret meanings of N+N compounds in daily communication. The meaning generation of an N+N compound is actually a processof searching for the optimal relevance between its two constituent N1and N2byreferring to the cognitive context. Meanwhile, this paper advocates a dynamic view ofexamining meaning generation of N+N compounds, that is, linguistic environmentshall be taken into consideration. For N+N compounds in specific linguisticenvironments, their meaning generation is a kind of pragmatic enrichment under theguidance of Relevance Theory. Since linguistic environments are also included in thecognitive context, the relevance between N+N compounds and linguisticenvironments shall be established for the interpretation of their meaning generation.The study of meaning generation of N+N compounds from the RelevanceTheory in this paper provides a new perspective. Meanwhile, dynamic meaninggeneration view deepens the interpretation of N+N compounds and lays thefoundation for further study.