Metonymy And Object Alternations In Mandarin Directed Speech

Many linguists such as Lakoff and Turner, Croft etc. agree that metonymy concepts are part of the ordinary, everyday way we think, act and talk. Metonymy is a cognitive phenomenon underlying much of our ordinary thinking and that the use of metonymy in language is a reflection of its conceptual status. The purpose of the present study is to find out how metonymy as a mechanism affects object alternations in mandarin.This paper is composed of five parts, all of which focus on the issue of the relationship between metonymy and objects alternations in mandarin.Chapter 1 is the introduction of the complexity of object alternations in mandarin. The purpose of this paper is that metonymy plays a key role in explaining the object alternations in mandarin.Based on the main purpose of the study, chapter 2 firstly presents a detailed review of the previous studies on the object classifications in mandarin made by Meng Cong etc. Then the analyses made by Xing Fuyi, Guo Jimao, Feng Shengli, Gao Yunli and Fang Yan, Wang Zhanhua, Ren Ying, Kang Shiyong, and their inadequacies are brought forward. In this way, the significance of the present study is highlighted.Chapter 3 introduces different theories related to metonymy proposed by Lakoff and Turner, Croft, Langacker. In addition, this paper presents that metonymy has a close relation with Idealized Cognitive Model (ICM). Contiguity and prominence are two key factors that make metonymy possible. Contiguity relations hold only for salient, prototypical members of the conceptual categories involved, but the metonymic process generalizes them to these categories as wholes. In addition, perspectivization can gradually shade into metonymic extension. In many instances, the perspectivization of one component of a frame backgrounds other components, then the other components are suppressed completely.Chapter 4 is the core part of the paper. Patient is a prototypical object, so this paper does not explain it anymore. The paper focuses on the explanation of result object, Dui Xiang object, instrument object and manner object, agent object, motivation object, numeral-quantifier object, and zalei object in order to show what makes the object alternations in mandarin so complicated and in what way metonymy plays an important role in object alternations. During the explanation process, the metonymy theories from different linguists home and abroad are used to explain phenomena from different aspects. In explaining the result object, Langacker's various principles of relative salience are applied. Prominence plays an important role in explaining Duixiang object. In discussing instrument object and manner object, focus theory is applied. And Zhang Yunqiu and Wang Fufang conclude that economy is a motivation of metonymy by using the Optimality Theory. In discussing agent object, theories such as David Dowty's thematic proto-role theory and an argument selection principle, Waltereit's two levels of metonymy in verbal semantics, Shen Jiaxuan's blending analysis and Langacker's reference-point view are all employed. This paper accepts Zhang Yunqiu's classification of motivation object. Figure and Ground relation, Fauconnier and Turner's conceptual blending and principle of economy are applied in explaining motivation object. Numeral-quantifier objects work in ICMs. According to Langacker's view, the function of numeral-quantifier objects is similar to the function of pronominal anaphora. Furthermore, Hobbs et al have proposed a standard to judge whether an expression is metonymy or not: predicates impose constraints on their arguments that are often violated. The violation between predicate and argument makes the metonymy possible. In discussing Zalei objects, Sperber and Wilson's principle of relevance is applied. The relevant over irrelevant principle strengthens the situational and contextual relevance of a metonymy.The cognitive power of metonymy lies in that it is to conceptualize people's experiences and the abstract categories. It provides opportunities for people to learn the new or the unfamiliar by mentioning the contiguous aspects of the new or the unfamiliar thing. Thus metonymy can provide a much better way of understanding the object alternations in mandarin.