A Contrastive Study Of Metaphoric And Metonymic N+N Compounds In Chinese And English

Guided by the theory of Conceptual Metaphor,the Prototype Theory,and the Conceptual Blending Theory in cognitive linguistics,this dissertation conducts a survey on contrastive analysis of similarities and differences in metaphorical,metonymic,metaphtonymic and metonytaphorical noun-noun compounds both in the Chinese and English language by a case study of body-lexis-patterned noun-noun compounds from the perspective of quantitative and qualitative analysis.By the contrastive analysis of 1,111 Chinese metaphoric and/or metonymic noun-noun compounds patterned by 69 Chinese body lexis and 493 English counterparts patterned by 61 English body lexis,the dissertation examines:1)three contrastive analysis models of metaphorical and/or metonymic noun-noun compounds in Chinese and English,i.e.,the Semantic Compounding Model?SCM?,the Semantic Prominence Model?SPM?and the Metaphor and/or Metonymy Compounding Model?MMCM?,2)three indicators of the metaphorized and/or metonymized noun-noun patterned word-formation,i.e.,the hierarchy of N₁+N₂ metaphorical and/or metonymic compounding?N₁ and N₂ in different semantic fields?,the hierarchy of metaphorical and/or metonymic polysemization,the hierarchy of N₁+N₂ metaphorical and/or metonymic compounding?N₁ and N₂ in the same semantic fields?,and makes a technical distinction between the Inter-Relation and Inner-Relation among the complex metaphtor-metonymy relations by discussing the internal hierarchy of metaphorized and/or metonymized noun-noun patterned word-formation.Their similarities and differences are as follows:?1?In terms of the SCM,in the Chinese and English metaphorical and/or metonymic noun-noun compounding,some semantic roles/case relations have priority of being metaphorized and/or metonymized,and all semantic roles/case relations indicate a hierarchy of prominence or coercion,and so does the SCM.Besides,in the semantic compounding both in Chinese and English,there are overlapping semantic roles/case relations and models at the upper level of their own hierarchies.We tentatively infer the existence of potential prototypical semantic roles/case relations and prototypical models of N+N compounding,and we presume that the similarities between the SCMs in both languages are determined by the common traits of languages.However,there are differences in quantity and distribution of semantic roles played by the component noun in both languages,and both the semantic roles and the SCM are more diversified in the Chinese metaphoried and/or metonymized N+N compounding.The differences of the SCMs are determined by the language typology,the diversified observing perspectives of cognizers in the two languages,and the hierarchy of property prominence and feature prominence.?2?In terms of the SPM,the metaphorical and/or metonymic noun-noun compounding in Chinese and English share a majority of the SPMs,among which the modelsofProperty+Feature?Locative?,Property+Feature?appearance?,Feature?locative?+Property are at the upper level of hierarchy;Besides,the feature category,the property category and the telic role?Pustejovsky,1995?category are all prominent in compounding with the hierarchy of Feature>Telic Role>Property.Furthermore,the sub-feature categories are also hierarchical in prominence,among which the appearance and locative roles are both at the upper level.We assume that the similarities between the SCMs in both languages are also determined by the common traits of languages.However,apart from the sharing appearance category and the locative category,the most easily prominent feature categories include the instrument category,the purpose category and the similarity-oriented categories at the abstract level in the English language;among the most frequent SPMs,the Property+Telic model is the most;so it is with the Chinese SPMs,with an extra repetitive model of Feature?appearance?+Feature?appearance?.We argue that the differences of the SPMs are determined by the spatial traits of the Chinese language and the temporal traits of the English language,meanwhile,they are influenced by the cognizers and the lexicalization of the metaphorized and/or metonymized noun-noun compounding in both languages,in which the qualia structure of nouns plays roles on the basis of the Graded Salience Hypothesis proposed by Giora?1997;1999;2003;2004?.?3?In terms of the MMCM,the distribution of metaphor,metonymy,metaphtonymy and metonytaphor as accesses to the metaphoric,metonymic,metaphtonymic and metonytaphoric meaning in both languages is more or less similar.The MMCM with N₁ retaining its original meaning and N₂ being metaphorized is in a dominant position,and the MMCM with N₁ and N₂ both being metaphorizd is in an inferior position in both languages.Besides,the property category,appearance category and the locative category are most likely metaphorized based on similarities,and the property category,the locative category and the relic role category are most likely metonymied based on contiguity.Furthermore,the property category and the telic role category are most widely distributed in the MMCMs.The motivation for the similarities is that human thought processes are largely metaphorical and metonymic in nature as Lakoff&Johnson?1980?noted,both metaphor and metonymy are the cognitive accesses to N+N compounding.However,in the Chinese language,metaphor occupies a comparative advantage relative to metonymy at the first and the second level of compounding;In contrast,in the English language metonymy occupies a comparative advantage relative to metaphor.Additinally,among the Chinese MMCMs,the MMCM with both N₁ and N₂retaining their original meaning has a comparative advantage,while the MMCM with both N₁ and N₂ being metonymized has a comparative disadvantage;among the English MMCMs,the MMCM with N₁ being metonymized and N₂ retaining its original meaning has a comparative advantage,while the MMCM with both N₁ and N₂ being metaphorized has a comparative disadvantage.The metaphorization of component nouns in Chinese is most widely distributed,while the metonymization in English is most widely distributed.Metaphor demonstrates a strong preference for the similarities at the abstract level in Chinese,while it rarely emphasizes the abstracted similarities in the process of compounding in English.The similarities based on the instrument,purpose and result categories are most widely distributed in Chinese,while the concrete and the abstract similarities are most widely distributed in English,and the concrete similarities have a comparative advantage to the abstract similaritie.Surprisingly,metonymy is possibly based on the concrete and abstract similarities in Chinese,while it is not so in English.The fact indicates that,metonymy in Chinese comparatively has a preference for the concrete and abstracted similarities.While in English,metonymy has a preference for the instrument category and the purpose category.The differences of the MMCMs,as we infer,are determined by the language typology and the ways of cognition.The Chinese language is an ideographic language,its conceptual blending is more oriented to association and abstraction of concepts themselves,and its mainstream thought is often to express ideas by drawing inspirations from nearby and afar and hold things to speech will with diacrepancies.However,the English language is an alphabetic language with an orientation to hypotaxis,its morphological changes are often to categorize the Whole category and the Part category based on though of metonymy in nature,which implies the comparative advantage of metonymy to metaphor.In adition,metonymy emphasizes more cognitive accessibility in English than in Chinese.On the basis of contiguity,metonymy is more easily construed in the English language.?4?In the hierarchy of N₁+N₂ metaphorical and/or metonymic compounding,the categories at the upper level are more likely metaphtonymized,metonytaphorized,and/or polysemized,and the ones at the lower level are weaker in this respect,which is proportional to their relative positions or orders of categories in the hierarchy of the prototypical categories.We assume that the similarities between the hierarchy of N₁+N₂ metaphorical and/or metonymic compounding in both languages are determined by the basic or core position of conceptual categories,and their positions in cognition.However,the metaphorized and/or metonymized noun-noun patterned word-formation in Chinese is stronger than that in English,and the polysemization of noun-noun patterned word-formation in Chinese is also much stronger,even the categories in the marginal area of the prototype categories can also form the metaphorized and/or metonymized noun-noun compounds;In English,in contrast,the metaphorized and/or metonymized noun-noun patterned word-formation is weaker,and the categories in the marginal area of the prototype categories rarely form the metaphorized and/or metonymized noun-noun compounds.We maintain that the differences of metaphorized and/or metonymized noun-noun patterned word-formation in both languages are also related to their language typology.The Chinese language is an analytic language in which concepts are flexibly compounded by means of metaphor and/or metonymy,with a focus of parataxis by noun concept and object concept.In contrast,the English language is of synthetic orientation with phonemes as its writing system.Besides,the English language is more prone to conceptualizing actions instead of noun concept and object concept.To sum up,the differences and similarities of the metaphoric and metonymic N+N Compounds both in the Chinese and English language are determined by the language typology,the diversified observing perspectives of cognizers in the two languages,and the hierarchy of property prominence and feature prominence.Languages reflect views to the physical world,and what languages construct is to conceptualize the world.The common traits and national differences reflected by the Chinese and English language are the root perspective of probing into the similarities and differences of the two languages.