A Cognitive Study Of The Formal Representation Of Chinese ASPECT Category

Human beings categorize their sensational and perceptual experiences of the objective and subjective realities and phenomena, results of which(namely category) designated by symbolic/formal unit stored in human mind in the form of concepts meanwhile. In this way, the ASPECT concept refers to the cognition of the realities phenomena and the knowledge structure based on them. Therefore the cognitive study of ASPECT category should involve discussions on the conceptual knowledge structure, which exists in our mind stably, and bases itself upon the generation of ASPECT concept and its representation. The above recognition has not been found in current Chinese ASPECT category study, so does the study on its representations from this perspective.In view of this situation, this dissertation is established on ‘generation’ view and discusses three main questions: the definition of Chinese ASPECT category; the building of ASPECT prototype category; and the linguistic representation of ASPECT category. These discussions are all based on the ‘generation’ view and the formal unit concept frame theory, cooperated by the prototype category theory, encyclopedic knowledge network and conceptual metaphor and metonymy theory, as well as the grammaticalization theory. The main study methods are described as follows: 1) this dissertation makes quantitative and qualitative analyses. It analyzes comprehensively and carefully the usage of the formal units of ASPECT concept in Chinese concluded from reference books and corpus, and then conducted quantitatively analyze on part of them. 2) This dissertation describes the related language materials comprehensively and carefully at first, and makes reasonable cognitive explanations on them afterwards. Main study content and its conclusions are concluded as follows:1) In terms of the formal studies, this dissertation makes a modification on the definition of Chinese ASPECT category at first, which is directed by the formal unit concept frame(includes event frame theory). And revises the definition like this: ASPECT is the prominent(in different ways) on the‘intrinsic state of time’ of basic conceptual elements in a event frame. Based upon the revised definition and supported theoretically by the prototype theory, this dissertation then builds a Chinese ASPECT prototype category. At first, we build the Chinese ASPECT prototype category from horizontal direction. The three basic composing elements for the Chinese ASPECT prototype category are ‘cutting’, ‘flowing’ and ‘single-dimensioned’, which are seen as the basic attributes/characteristics belonging to Chinese ASPECT prototype category. The typical member phasal aspect has all the attributes. The middle member perspectival aspect has the ‘flowing’ and ‘single-dimensioned’ attributes. The marginal member viewpoint aspect as well as the quantificational aspect only has the attribute of ‘cutting’. The concept frame expansion route ‘completive > perfect > perfective’ fits close to their ordering on typicality degree.And then this dissertation discuss the sub-categorization in Chinese ASPECT prototype category from vertical direction. We conclude three layers, that is, phasal aspect and the others, initiative and the others, resultative perfect and the others. We also point out that the layer where initiative and the others lies is the basic layer category in Chinese ASPECT prototype category, which owns the characteristics of cognitive precedence and communicative convenience.2)This dissertation compares afterwards the representation rule of different form units in the basic layer category of Chinese ASPECT prototype category and discovers that there are differences in three main aspects:restrictions on the event frame type;express or unexpress rule for other types of event frame elements;representation rule on its upper layer in event frame.This dissertation explains these differences from the perspective of prototype category,that is,to create a typicality continuum in each sub-category(initiative aspect,perfect aspect,perfective aspect and the others).Basic influencing factors are listed as conceptual content;dependency degree on the event frame structure;difficulty for understanding,degree of grammaticalization,and the frequency of its usage.Basic conclusions are:in the phasal sub-category,the typicality continuum of initiative aspect is concluded as‘qilai(起来体)>qi(起体)>shang(上体),kai(开体)’;the typicality continuum of durative aspect is concluded as‘xiaqu(下去体)>xialai(下来体)’;the typicality continuum of completive aspect is concluded as‘wan(完体)>guo(过体1)>hao(好体)’.In the perspective sub-category,the typicality continuum of perfect aspect is concluded as‘guo(过体2)>laizhe(来着体),le(了体2)’;the typicality continuum of progressive aspect is concluded as‘zai(在体)>zheng(正体)>zai v/adj zhe(在v/adj着体)>ne(呢体),zhene(着呢体)’.In the viewpoint sub-category,the typicality continuum of perfective aspect is concluded as‘le(了)-process>le(了)-initiative,le(了)-terminative’.3)At last,this dissertation analyzes the mechanism for the generation of different form units of ASPECT concept.It is found that the conceptual metonymy and metaphor are the main paths to generate the form units of ASPECT concept.The SPACE concept(such as‘moving position’,‘exist’,‘attachment’)represented by qilai(起来),xiaqu(下去),guo(过),zai(在),zhe(着)changed under the effection of conceptual metonymy mechanism,such as the‘attachment’concept(represented by zhe)projected to‘durationcaused by attachment’through the metonymy mechanism.The metaphor projection from ASPECT category to ASPECT category was then fulfilled.Besides,the concept frame expansion route‘completive>perfect>perfective’for le(了)also has metaphor connection with the motive position variation‘departion>approach>arrive’in SPACE category.