A Cognitive Grammar Approach To The Semantics Of Chinese Bare Nouns:form The Perspective Of Grounding

The main function of nouns in a language is reference.The semantics of nouns isbasically the description of its reference,which is one of the many traditional issues ofcommon interests in linguistics,logics and philosophy.Currently there have been no richresearch findings on the study of semantics of Chinese bare nouns,which is of great value.How the Chinese bare nouns,as a grammatical form without any morphological marker,realize different referential meanings is an issue that attracts our attention.At present,Cognitive Linguistics as a new way to explain linguistic phenomena has beenflourished at home and abroad,providing us with a new perspective of linguistic research.Langacker's Cognitive Grammar attaches great importance to Grounding Theory,which laysstress on how the ground contributes to the meaning of the language.The term ground is usedfor the speech event,its participants,and its immediate circumstances.It is held that anexpression is used by way of apprehending the ground.This study attempts to re-examine thesemantics of Chinese bare nouns from the theoretical perspective of Grounding Theory inCognitive Grammar,with the aim to find out the cognitive mechanisms of semanticconstruction of Chinese bare nouns.The main aim of this study is to describe the semantics of Chinese bare nouns from theperspective of Grounding Theory,making cognitive interpretation to the semanticconstruction mechanism of Chinese bare nouns.More specifically,the study aims to find out:first,the most basic referential function of Chinese bare nouns;second,the semanticconstruction mechanism of Chinese bare nouns;third,the characteristics of the grounding ofChinese bare nouns.The study consists of eight chapters.The first chapter is an introduction.The secondchapter is the literature review.The third chapter is concerning the definition of Chinese barenouns and the referential system of the study.The fourth chapter is the cognitive analyticalframework.The fifth chapter explores the semantic features of the Chinese bare nouns.Thesixth chapter discusses the cognitive mechanism of semantic construction of bare nouns.Theseventh chapter is the conclusion.Chapter One is an introduction,mainly concerning the motive,aim,methodology,theoretical perspective,corpus of the study,and the composition of this dissertation.Chapter Two is the literature review,which includes a survey of the previous studies of Chinese bare nouns and comments on it.On the basis of the survey,the research questions ofthis study are proposed.So far as the studies of Chinese bare nouns are concerned,the structuralists have providedadequate description with regard to their syntactic position.Two conclusions are made:first,the bare nouns in subject position tend to have definite reference and the ones in objectposition tend to have indefinite reference.Second,Shi Yuzhi argues the default structure ofthe Chinese sentence automatically assigns a definite feature to the preverbal noun and anindefinite feature to the postverbal noun.Generative Grammar addresses this problem fromtwo perspectives:to analyze the main predicate of the sentence in order to find out the effectby individual-level predicate and stage-level predicate;or regarding the various reference ofbare nouns as the result of syntactic movement.The researches from the perspective ofCognitive linguistics are only a few,and the most influencial one is Shen Jiaxuan's view onbounded and unbounded nouns.It is considered that typical grammatical form of boundednouns is bare nouns in subject position of a sentence,while the typical grammatical form ofunbounded nouns is nouns with generic reference and other bare nouns.However,the previous studies have deepened our understanding of semantics of Chinesebare nouns and supported our current study in one way or another.But we notice that somequestions are still at issue concerning Chinese bare nouns.For instance,what are thereferential functions of Chinese bare nouns and which one is the most basic one?How doesthe"invisible"grounding,with the hypothesis that the semantics of Chinese bare nouns areaffected by covert grounding,contribute to the semantic construction of Chinese bare nouns?What are the characteristics of covert grounding of Chinese bare nouns?These become thekey questions of this study.Chapter Three redefines the scope of Chinese bare nouns and re-examines thereferential system of Chinese nouns.From the perspective of grounding,this paper claims thatall nouns are referential.There are two subcategories in terms of referential,abstract referenceand non-abstract reference,based on whether the speaker employs a grounding predication inthe discourse.Non-abstract reference is further divided into non-individual reference andindividual reference,which includes identifiable and non-identifiable reference.Chapter Four puts forward a grounding hypothesis of Chinese bare nouns on the basis ofGrounding Theory of Cognitive Grammar.Compared with the overt grounding system ofEnglish nominals,Chinese grounding system are covert.It is assumed that Chinese has aspecial way of grounding nouns,making the participants of the speech event(speaker andhearer)to establish mental contact with the profiled things in the discourse.On the basis of the above hypothesis,a cognitive analytical framework is established for theconceptualization of Chinese bare nouns.Grounding is to find out the position of the profileof bare nouns in relation to the ground.Through grounding,the speaker directs the hearer'sattention to the instance he has in mind,while the hearer can single out the instance based onthe grounding element,and both the speaker and hearer can finally achieve coordinatedmental contact with the referent of the bare nouns.Chapter Five describes the semantic features of the bare nouns on the ground of aself-built700,000-word corpus,and has made detailed description of the different reference ofbare nouns.The analysis shows that:bare nouns are used extensively in discourse and themain referential function of bare nouns in the discourse is identifiable reference;the syntacticposition of bare nouns is quite flexible and the bare nouns in the subject and object position inthe phrases and bare nouns as modifiers are always of abstract reference;the reference of barenouns has no direct connection with their syntactic position.Chapter Six probes into the cognitive construction mechanism of Chinese bare nouns.The result is always the same:the speaker and hearer achieve coordinated mental referencewithin the current frame.The various kinds of grounding elements differ in how thiscoordination is achieved.The definite reference is realized through"internal type-instanceneutralized grounding","possessive and inferring grounding","time and spatial anchoringgrounding","speaker-hearer interactional grounding","retrospective and prospectivegrounding"and"quantificational grounding".The speaker uses grounding element to open amental path connecting the listener with the profiled instance in the domain of instantiation.Indefinite reference is realized by using grounding elements such as"guò"and"yǒu"toobtain"individuleness".The speaker uses grounding element to open a mental pathconnecting the listener with any instance in the domain of instantiation.The generic referenceof bare nouns profiles a concept of"entirety".The speaker grounds the whole sentence as"unrealistic"in order to direct the listener's attention to the whole set of instances of the barenoun type.Chapter Seven reaches the conclusionof the dissertation,concerning the main findings ofthis study.First,the dissertation discusses the semantics of Chinese bare nouns and has madea thorough analysis of the semantics of bare nouns on the basis of the700,000-word corpus.The results showed that the main function of bare nouns in discourse is identifiable reference.Second,the reference of bare nouns is affected by various ways of grounding rather than thiersyntactic positions.Third,Chinese bare nouns realize different references through covert,indirect grounding.Fourth,the different ways of grounding in Chinese bare nouns are mutually compatible and intertwined;the semantic construction of a bare noun is oftensubject to a variety of grounding predications.Fifth,the grounding of Chinese nouns shows agreat difference with English nominal grounding,yet there are certain similarities:(a).TheEnglish nominal is grounded by"a"when expressing indefinite reference,which is the sameas in Chinese that the bare nouns are grounded by"gè"and"yǒu"in order to expressindefinite meanings.This also shows that the expression of indefiniteness is not the essentialfunction of Chinese bare nouns;(b).The definite grounding elements in English and Chineseshow paralleled characteristics:In English the definite grounding elements are"the","this"and"that",while in Chinese there are"zhè+classifier"and"nà+classifier".But in Chinese,covert grounding is adopted under most circumstances,and bare nouns are inclined to be usedfor definite reference;(c).English grounding elements such as quantifiers,articles anddemonstratives are mutually exclusive,which reflects the function of these groundingelements redundant and incompatible.But the Chinese grounding elements are intertwined,and the semantic construction of a bare noun is often subject to various ways of grounding.The theoretical significances of this study are:Firstly,this study is an application ofGrounding Theory in the research of Chinese bare nouns,addressing the question of howfactors in the ground participate in the construction of Chinese grammar.The language factsof Chinese have also made complements and amendments to the theory that grounding cannot only be overt and covert,but can also be mandatory and nonmandatory.Secondly,research on grounding of Chinese bare nouns has enriched the study in traditional Chinesegrammar.The study complements the"hypothesis of kind-denoting nouns"proposed by LiuDanqing and the"structurally semantic assignment rule"proposed by Shi Yuzhi,providing anew perspective of looking into the issues of semantics of Chinse nouns,aspect and modality.Thirdly,the semantic construction of Chinese bare nouns is interpreted based on an unfiedmodel of grounding of Chinese bare nouns.The practical significances of this study are:first,the interpretation made on Chinese barenouns from the perspective of grounding provides a new angle for the research on theselection and use of the noun phrases in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language.Second,itis of certain value to promote the completion of Chinese grammar system.There are still limitations of the study,providing outlook for future research.First,thedescription of Chinese bare nouns is to be further refined.The generic use of bare nouns is ofa certain proportion in the actual use.We believe that the speaker grounds the whole sentenceas"unrealistic"in order to direct the listener's attention to the whole set of instances of thebare noun type.Therefore the further classification of generic reference deserves further investiagation.Second,speculative research should be based on actual langue use to achievesolid conclusions.This study attaches more importance to actual langue data rather thanintrospective data.The classification of the5435bare nouns serves a fine basis for furtheranalysis on the proportion of various grounding elements,showing the characteristics ofChinese bare noun grounding in a more direct way.These grounding methods and the relationbetween them needs to be further explored in the future.