A Prototype Theory-based Study Of Verbal Nominalization In The Abstracts Of Post-graduates’ Theses

The linguistic phenomenon of verbal nominalization means a kind of transformation from verbs to nouns or noun clauses. It frequently appears in the abstracts of post graduates’ theses. At the early stage of verbal nominalization’s study, the approaches of morphology and syntax are taken seriously. For the last years, transformational-generative approach, systemic-functional approach and cognitive-grammar approach have become the focus of verbal nominalization’s study.The research object of the thesis is verbal nominalization, including lexical verbal nominalization, semi-clausal verbal nominalization and clausal verbal nominalization, which appear in the post graduates’ theses abstracts. The study is on account of the theory of categorization. And it aims at illustrating the differences in the realization of verbal nominalization from prototype theory’s perspective.Through a corpus-based device, qualitative and quantitative techniques are applied. The corpus source is 200 pieces of abstracts of post graduates’ theses from 12 different types of Chinese universities. By the Searching Aid Ant Conc and Statistical Analysis Tool Chi-Square Calculator, the detailed distribution of different types of verbal nominalization in the abstracts is clearly shown and compared according to 6 typical academic directions. Besides, a qualitative research is also adopted to identify and pick out the derived nouns or noun clauses derived from verbs, and the realization of verbal nominalization is analyzed and explained.In line with the data and results shown in the thesis, different types of verbal nominalization are realized from prototype theory’s perspective, which are shown from the following aspects: 1) there exist differences in the realization of different types of verbal nominalization from prototype theory’s perspective; 2) semantic differences, structural differences and functional differences occur along with the categorization from verb category into noun category.The thesis aims at achieving the goals from both academic aspect and practical aspect. Academically, it investigates verbal nominalization into the cognitive level, where prototype theory is applied to explain the realization process of different types of verbal nominalization. Practically, it offers graduates some new visual angles in the application of verbal nominalization to composing the abstracts of theses.