Modern Chinese Equivalent To The Areas Of Semantic Cognition

This dissertation makes a study on category of identity in modern Chinese by the aid of subjectivity theory and iconicity theory of cognitive grammar.Identity category is an important cognitive category and identity category in cognitive domain is a kind of relation category. If the cognitive category were projected into language, it would become an identity category of language and also a semantic category.This paper attempts to set up a system to express the identity category in Chinese, using equivalent identity, similarity identity and contiguity identity, which are attached to identity category, as longitude while subjectivity and iconicity as latitude. The specific way is to find the characteristics and rules in expression by means of semantic meanings.There are six theoretical researches and new ideas in this article. 1) Identifications can be divided into objective identities and subjective identities. The former is the identifications between objects or conventional recognition. The latter is the cognitive result of a certain cognitive subject in a certain context, which is different from conventional identities. 2) Identity category is made up of equivalent identity, similarity identity and contiguity identity. Seemingly, this is directly related to the differences of identities. In fact, the difference of subjectivity from equivalent identity to contiguity identity is the basic reason leading to the appearing of the three categories. 3) Two criteria may be used to judge the degree of subjectivity. One is the social criterion, which is a kind of identity accepted by the whole society or most of the members of our society, thus its objective degree is high and its subjective degree is low. The other is an individual criterion, which is made by a certain subject under a certain aim, thus its subjective degree is high and its objective degree is low. 4) The change of the degree between objectivity and subjectivity is continuous. The continuum is like this: Contiguity Identity) Similarity Identity) Equivalent Identity. The degree of subjectivity becomes lower and lower from the left to the right. Accordingly, the degree of objectivity becomeshigher and higher. 5) The difference exists not only among the three categories above, but also inside themselves. For example, inside the equivalent identity the difference is like this: anaphoric phrase > the sentence which contains "作为" >the sentence which contains "是" . The second example, inside the similarity identity the difference is like this: the form of similarity substitute> the form of "是" > the form of "像" . The third example, inside the contiguity identity, the difference is like this: the sentence which contains " 是 " of metonymy) the form of substitute of metonymy. The degree of subjectivity becomes lower and lower from the left to the right. 6) The form of identification can reflect the semantic content of it as well as the cognitive structure. Its expression in language is reasonable, which can reflect its iconicity, such as proximity iconicity, quantitative iconicity and sequencing iconicity. The stronger the subjectivity of identity is, the simpler the form of language is; the weaker the subjectivity of identity is, the more complicated the form of the language is.In brief, to analyze identity in modern Chinese from the angle of categories can not only break through the limit grammar and rhetoric in traditional study, but also link up language problems, thought problems and cognitive problems. This is an attempt of methodology.It has practical value as well as theoretical meaning and applied meaning to make a systematic, pragmatic and cognitive study on identity category, referring to the achievements of psychology and logic.The macrostructure is described above. In microcosmic study, some shining points can be found in this article, such as the analysis of the sentences containing "是" , the conclusion of the characteristics of anaphoric phrase, the analysis of iconicity about the three metonymy, etc.This article includes six ch...