Cognitive Analyses Of Hedges In Semantic Categories

Fuzziness, as one of the intrinsic and indispensable features that natural languages have, exists prevailingly in the inner of the language system and on all aspects of language use. Although the phenomenon of linguistic fuzziness has long been noticed and studied, the special research about fuzzy language just has a history of about forty years. Fuzzy linguistics is a newly arisen discipline, of which the basic theory is fuzzy sets theory proposed by an American scientist L. A. Zadeh in 1965. Its main research field was restricted to semantics at the very beginning: the sources of semantic fuzziness and the quantitative analysis of fuzzy meaning, etc., and pragmatics later on, which focused on fuzzy language's functions in verbal communication, etc.As an important field in fuzzy linguistics, hedges exist prevalently in all kinds of languages and perform a vital role in verbal communication. A mere study in semantics and pragmatics as well as grammar and social linguistics can hardly adequately account for such a prevailing phenomenon, so it is necessary to study hedges from a cognitive perspective. That is to analyze hedges from a cognitive perspective with the application of categorization theories so as to better explicate the fuzzy linguistic phenomenon.The goal of this dissertation is to analyze hedges' classifications, features and functions in semantic categories with a theoretical support from the categorization theories, then to reveal that, it is significant to analyze hedges from a cognitive perspective; hedges and semantic categories play an interactive and interrelated role with each other; and how hedges are analyzed with the application of categorization theories. The author sets forth these viewpoints in five chapters:Chapter One is an introduction, which sketches out the thesis and the plan of this dissertation. Firstly, it presents a general introduction to the intrinsic features of linguistic fuzziness and the historical development of the studies on fuzziness and fuzzy linguistics, which is the study background of this dissertation; then it focuses on hedges, which is an important field in fuzzy linguistics, and introduces the status quo of their studies; next it points out that cognitive studies of hedges are of vital significance both from theoretical and practical perspectives. Consequently, it is worth thoroughly investigating and surveying.Chapter Two takes a specific step to discuss categorization and hedges. First of all, the nature of categorization and its importance are discussed thoroughly. According to Zhao Yanfang (2001), categorization is a kind of advanced cognitive activity by which human beings classify the world, and its process is complex and fuzzy rather than simple and precise. Therefore, it is of great importance in terms of physical objects, natural phenomena, as well as linguistics. As the following, two categorization theories, namely classical theory and prototype theory, are introduced together with one principle, i.e. family resemblance; then, a comparison between classical theory and prototype theory is made so as to show that the latter is superior to the former to some degree because it shows that human categorization is based on principles that extend far beyond those envisioned in the former. Finally, categorization and hedges play an interactive and interrelated role with each other.Chapter Three focuses on the analyses of some researchers' classifications of hedges in semantic categories from a cognitive point of view. That is to say, the categorization theories mentioned in Chapter Two are applied to making detailed cognitive analyses of hedges' classifications. First, Zadeh (1972) classifies hedges into...