An Exploration Of Denomination Mechanism Of Places In The Light Of AEM

Place name, as a conventionalized symbol, can be used to refer to or distinguish different regions and orientations. They are products resulted from the interaction between human beings and the real world, thus embodying human's social life. Many scholars have delved into the motivation, cultural background and rhetoric feature of the names from different perspectives such as philology, translatology, cross-cultural communication, Linguistics, etc. but seldom made an in-depth approach to its cognitive mechanism, and furthermore, lacked the support of database.This thesis attempts to propose an integrated model, named AEM, by integrating Adaptation theory, Event-domain Cognitive Model and Metaphtonymy, so as to better disclose the cognitive mechanism of place denomination. The mechanism of place denomination highlights some prominent features of the places for the human adaptation to the different worlds, namely the material world, social world and mental world. The theory of adaptation can be used to account for different place denominations in terms of different times or cultures.This thesis can be divided into five chapters:The first chapter of the study is meant to give a general introduction of the rationale, motivations, objectives and organization of the thesis.And the second chapter is devoted to review the previous studies on place denomination, in order to find out the research gap. Names of place names have sparked the interests of the scholars due to their infinite variety and profound meanings. They have delved into the cultural background and rhetoric features of the names on the basis of the traditional philosophy, translatology, cross-cultural communication, but few made an in-depth analysis of its cognitive mechanism and furthermore, lacked support of database.In Chapter Three, this thesis tends to construct a new theoretical framework AEM by integrating Adaptation theory, Event-domain Cognitive Model and Metaphtonymy, so as to better disclose the cognitive mechanism of place denomination. ECM, proposed by Wang Yin (2007), highlights Embodiment and Metonymical and hierarchy structure in human's thinking pattern. Wang argues that denomination comes from the prominent features through embodiment. Yet, it attaches little importance to the social parameters which affect greatly human cognition. Therefore, the model fails to give a satisfactory explanation of exactly how embodiment affects the denomination of place names. Adaptation Theory, proposed by Verschueren(1999), focus on the mutual adaptation between language and the world, and incorporates a social-interactional perspective on the nature of language. Hence, AEM will be proposed on the basis of the demerits of ECM and merits of AT, with the aid of Metaphtonymy..In Chapter Four, we will analyze the place denomination in the light of AEM. Ten condensed naming models accordingly come out, followed by detailed explanations with the support of metaphor, metonymy, adaptation and prominence.In the last chapter, it comes to the conclusion involving three contributions as follows:1) A closed corpus of Chinese place names was built up from 26 provincial capitals.2) AEM was established to account for the place denomination on the basis of ECM and AT, with the aid of Metaphonymy. Further elaboration of"embodiment"is specified into 3 aspects to emphasize the social parameters in naming process. Adaptation is emphasized in explanation of naming and renaming processes in different cultures and in different historical stages.3) 10 main naming models and 102 sub-models are concluded on the basis of the analysis of the collected database. More explanation will go to their existence and difference.Finally, some defects are pointed out and some suggestions for the future relevant studies are made.