A Study Of Denominal Verbs In English And Chinese: From The Perspective Of Cognitive Linguistics

Denominal verbs are pervasive in English and Chinese. They represent an area of linguistic creativity where the interaction among form, meaning, context and the conceptualizer converges. Therefore, they are an interesting subject for investigation the findings of which can help us get a glimpse into the nature of linguistic creativity as well as of human mind.Both generative grammar and formal semantics assume that semantics is strictly compositional and meanings are objectively describable in terms of truth conditions by a formal logic language. Such a stance of Fregean compositionality views that words have pre-tagged syntactic features and pre-packaged meanings which, with appropriate mechanisms of composition, can be added together to form sentence meanings. This compositional stance excludes phenomena like metaphor and metonymy from proper linguistic analysis. However, observation on the meanings of locatum and location verbs shows that, for a sentence with a denominal verb, its sentence meanings can not be precisely computed out by the sum of the words'meanings in it. Furthermore, two corpus studies reveal that metaphorical use of denominal verbs is a commonplace phenomenon and their metaphorical use should not be excluded from proper linguistic analysis. Therefore, neither generative grammar nor formal semantics can simply be an appropriate approach to the meanings of denominal verbs.The dynamic construal approach (Croft & Cruse, 2004) taken in this study contends that neither meanings nor structural relations are specified in the lexicon but are construed on-line in actual situations of use. A word maps onto a body of conceptual content (purport) which is the ontological material to be construed by a conceptualizer in actual situation of language communication. Meanings arise when different construals (such as profile/base, summary/ sequential scanning, metonymy and metaphor) operate on the purport in an on-line situation of communication.Based on the studies of Pustejovsky (1996), Jackendoff (2002) and Geeraerts (1997), this study undertakes to depict the inner structure of purport evoked by nouns. It is argued that purport is structured with three interconnected qualia roles, i.e. CONFIGURATIONAL, TELIC, and AGENTIVE qualia. Knowledge in these qualia is restricted by four centrality factors such as conventionality, genericness, intrinsicness, and characteristicness. Due to these factors, knowledge in each quale is organized around prototype and has internal structure in gradation. Moreover, these qualia are not a set of sufficient and necessary attributes for defining purport; they have different degrees of cognitive salience due to"cue validity"of a category and different levels of categorization; and they play a crucial role in categorization. The conceptual nature of qualia roles are important in describing the meanings of nouns and denominal verbs.Following Langacker's (2004 a, b) model of defining nouns and verbs and the findings of image schema theory—especially Mandler's (2005) representation of SELF-MOVING ANIMATE and CAUSED-TO-MOVE INANIMATE image schemas, this study attempts to carry out a unified account for the schematic grammatical meaning and specific lexical meaning of denominal verbs. A noun profiles a thing which is a region in an image schema and is summarily scanned as static and holistic gestalt. In contrast, a verb profiles a process which is relational and sequentially scanned over time. The conversion from nouns to verbs is the result of two interwoven construal operations: the addition of profiles and the switch from summary scanning to sequential scanning on the same conceptual base which is composed of an image schema or combination of image schemas. Meanwhile, the addition of profiles is sanctioned by the asymmetric conceptual dependent (ACD) relation between component parts within the image schemas. Different construals on the same base illustrate that grammatical categories are meaningful. Moreover, different construals on the same base of image schema lead to the meaning differences, although schematic, between a noun and its corresponding denominal verb. Thus, the grammatical category of an expression is not determined by its overall conceptual content, but specifically by the construal operations it imposes on the conceptual content.On the basis of the schematic grammatical meaning, specific lexical meaning of denominal verbs is argued to be constructed by two construal operations—metonymy and metaphor. Their specific lexical meaning is constructed by a zone activation of a certain quale and a source-in-target metonymy which can be generically represented as ACTIVATED QUALE FOR THE ACTION EVENT. Moreover, metonymy and metaphor interact to pin down the specific lexical meaning of a denominal verb. It is argued that the metaphoric use of denominal verbs is the result of zone activation of a certain quale and metonymic expansion of a metaphoric source. Moreover, referential and predicative use of metonymy and metaphor accounts for the the syntactic features and rhetorical effects of denominal verbs. Furthermore, based on the findings of child language ability and personal data observation, this study attempts to describe the cognitive ability of children at early-verbal stages. Young children are argued to be cognitively mature for dynamic construal operations. Therefore, the dynamic construal approach is justified as a feasible approach for a unified account of denominal verbs in both adult language and child language.Investigations in this study demonstrates that the conversion from a noun to a verb is not merely a change of grammatical categories, but also a manifestation of the speaker's alternate construals of experience being communicated. Therefore, the dynamic construal approach accommodates the conceptualizers'ability of construing the objective world in different ways. Moreover, the investigation reveals that grammatical categories are meaningful and grammar of a language is non-generative and non-constructive and it simply provides its speakers with an inventory of symbolic resources. Using these resources to construct and create novel expressions is something the speakers do (but not grammars do) by virtue of their general categorizing and problem-solving abilities. Linguistic creativity is a part of general cognitive ability of speakers, and the sharp distinction customarily made between rule-governed creativity and creativity in a more general sense such as metaphor and metonymy is unattainable and unnecessary.Furthermore, this study reveals that, besides the functional constraints of pre-emption by synonymy, pre-emption by homonymy and phonological constraints, conceptual constraints imposed by the ACD relation between entities in an image schema and by the characteristics of different levels of categories compress the room of conceptualizers'cognitive maneuver, which keeps linguistic creativity relatively stable and makes communication coherent within a speech community. Moreover, the conceptual constraints demonstrate that semantic structure and syntactic relations are closely connected with conceptual structure.In summary, the dynamic construal approach to denominal verbs bolsters four tenets of cognitive linguistics: the meaningfulness of grammar; an anti-compositional view of meaning; an experientialist and conceptualist stance while characterizing linguistic meanings; and a serious attitude towards metaphoric and metonymic use of language.