A Cognitive Study Of Human Body Words' N-V Shift Both In English And Chinese

This thesis, based on Conceptual Blending Theory proposed by Gills Fauconnier and Mark Turner(1995, 1998, 2002)and Idealized Cognitive Mode, is intended to explore cognitive identifications and generative mechanisms of human body words'N-V shift. The backstage meaning construction process from human body part nouns to verbs is focused on.The study is a qualitative study of human body words'N-V shift mainly from cognitive point of view based on a self-built corpus. The majority of research data in the corpus are collected from Oxford Advanced Learner's English-Chinese Dictionary, The English-Chinese Dictionary, Xian Dai Han Yu Ci Dian, Gone with the Wind, Desperate Housewives, and Google Search.The research is committed to the following questions. 1) What are cognitive identifications of human body words'N-V shift? 2) How does Conceptual Blending Theory operate in the cognitive identifications of human body words'N-V shift? 3) What are the subtypes of metaphor-metonymy coexistence identification, and what features are reflected in the cognitive process? 4) What are common traits between English and Chinese human body words'N-V shift mainly from cognitive point of view?Based on discussion and analysis, this thesis comes to the following conclusion. shape, position, function, such three semantic image extraction features of human body parts are major trigger factors of human body words'N-V shift, which provide cognitive motivations for imagery identification, metaphor identification, metonymy identification, and metaphor-metonymy coexistence identification. In the meaning construction process, the transference and blending of human body parts'images, the highlighting and establishing of similarity and contiguity reveal the selective and dynamic blending process across domains.It is shown in the thesis that human body words'N-V shift is essentially a dynamic process where conceptual blending is operating, a process where remarkable features of human body part are highlighted, and a process where similarity and contiguity are hunted for between the body noun domain and the action domain.Meanwhile, it is found that English and Chinese human body words'N-V shift are built on the interaction between human body and the outside world, and both can be perceived through these four cognitive modes. However, owing to different ways of thinking, cultural modes and internal structures of language, English are more common than Chinese in this aspect. Chinese human body words'N-V shift largely exists in ancient Chinese, while in modern Chinese they appear in polysyllabic words.The study is hopeful to further the related study of human body words'noun-quantifier conversion and noun-adjective conversion. Four kinds of cognitive identifications can make language teaching and language learning much more vivid and effective.