| Verb is the cole part in various languages, which contains the expressing of action, behaviour, mental activities or existence, change and disappearance of these activities. As one of the important semantic subcategories of verbs, mental verb is concerned by lots of scholars due to that it refers to complex personal inner activities of emotion, willingness, cognition and feeling rooted in human's minds. This study chooses "think" verbs as object and explores it's changing path, which enriches theories and methods of the category in both Chinese and English. Meanwhile, it discovers the similarities and differences of thinking expression in the two language.Human thoughts are metaphoric, through which the research and understanding of language similarities and differences are traced. "Think" verb manifests one of the important body experience, namely, activities in human brain on linguistic level. The study starts with comparison of "think" verbs of Chinese and English language. It investigates thinking expression between the two languages. The manifestation of thinking carriers in Chinese and English is found out. Meanwhile, the mechanism of vocabulary changes have also been found through the analysis of semantic changes of "think" verbs.Chapter one "Classification of Mental Verbs and Definition of Chinese and English'think'verbs" defines the range of study, including broad and narrow senses of it; meanwhile, it explains the reasons of classification. An investigation of categorization of 77 Chinese and 80 English mental verbs has been conducted among 108 and 109 Chinese and American university students through completing questionnaires of classification. The mental verbs are categorized according to their semantic values correlates to the ones on the bidimensional calibration.Chapter two "Language Manifestation of Thoughts Carrier in Chinese and English"studies the similarities and difference of expression of thoughts carriers formats in Chinese and English languages and analyzes the forming reasons. The expression of heart and head/brain/mind and the classification of thought carriers in Chinese and English have been defined through searching 100 Chinese and English natives'blogs. The second part of chapter two compares the usage of heart and head/brain/mind in blogs and explains the results.Chapter three "Cognitive Model of Chinese and English Thoughts Concept" investigates thinking expressions in 100 Chinese and English natives' blogs. Seven cognitive models have been found, which are THOUGT AS CONTAINER/SPACE, THOUGHT AS PERCEPTION, THOUGHT AS VISION, THOUGHT AS MOVEMENT, THOUGHT AS ORGANISM, THOUGHT AS INANIMATE OBJECTS, THOUGHT AS BODY. Verbs are found to play significant restricting role in generating metaphors of thought in the inverstigation of thought nouns. These verbs help completing the transference of action domain to thought domain.Chapter four "Semantic Features and Lexicalization Patterns of Chinese and English'Think' Verb" summarizes the lexicalization patterns of "think" verbs on the basis of comparing their semantic elements, which helps to deal with Chinese-English translation of the category.Chapter five "Semantic Origins and Lexicalization of Chinese and English 'Think'Verb"studies the lexicalization process of "weigh up" "mull over" "to plan" "consider" "revole" "think about" and "methinks" from diachronic level and analyzes the relative forming factors.Chapter six "Grammaticalization and of'WO XIANG' and'I THINK' and Their Usage in Blogs" first investigates the semantic and pragmatic changes and grammticalization of "wo xiang"and "I think". Both "xiang" and "think" progress from "action" to "cognition"and "discourse marker", which subjectivity strengthens gradually. The chapter then analyzes the usage of "wo xiang" and "I think"in blogs statisticallly. The frequency of using "wo xiang" in Chinese natives' blogs is far more less than correlated construction in English natives' blogs. The result is explained from cultural values. |
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