Autonomy/Dependence Alignment:A Cognitive Study Of Mongolian Compound Adjectives

As the name suggests,compound words are formed by the combination of some words.Mongolian compound words are mainly divided into compound nouns,compound adjectives,compound verbs and compound adverbs,among which Mongolian compound adjectives account for a certain proportion in Mongolian vocabulary.Although Mongolian compound adjectives are simple in form,but they imply the diversity of word-formation features and the complexity of meaning construction.Most of the previous studies on Mongolian compound adjectives describe the relationship between the two entity concepts in a formalized way,that is,the study only stays at the surface of the language.It is difficult to elaborate the deeper meaning of Mongolian compound adjectives.Therefore,it is necessary to study the generation mechanism of Mongolian compound adjectives.Both quantitative and qualitative approaches are adopted in this study.Based on analytical model of the autonomy/dependence alignment in cognitive linguistics,200 Mongolian compound adjectives are collected from the Mongolian Grammar Information Dictionary of Fixed Phrases((?)),A Grammar of Modern Mongolian((?))and Modern Mongolian((?))to explore the semantic relations between the components,so as to reveal the generation mechanism of it.It is found that the semantic generation of Mongolian compound adjectives is realized through autonomy/dependence alignment.The specific characteristics show following points.As to Mongolian compound adjectives,although this compound adjectives formed by two adjectives are parallel in form,their meanings are conceptually dependent on each other.In addition,the semantic construction of subordinate compound adjectives is shown by the correspondence between the substructures of the modifier and the head.Besides,the semantic generation ofsubject-predicate compound adjectives is realized by the corresponding relationship between the components of statement and being stated.In the process of connection,the component of statement makes the meaning of the noun change,making it close to the component of statement and completes its meaning construction.The significance of the present study is mainly reflected in the following two aspects.On the one hand,the study of the semantic generation of Mongolian compound adjectives can help to deepen the understanding of Mongolian compound adjectives.On the other hand,the study of Mongolian compound adjectives based on autonomy/dependence alignment not only broadens the research horizons on Mongolian compound adjectives,but also hopes to broaden the application of autonomy/dependence alignment.