The Formation And Semantics Of Deverbal-er Nominalization From The Perspective Of Transitivity Continuum: A Cognitive-Functional Approach

The classification of noun and verb is natural commonality of all the human languages, the conversion of which is a universal phenomenon. Nominalization is any process by which either a noun or a syntactic unit functioning as a noun phrase is derived from any other kind of unit such as a verb or an adjective. Nominalization is a universally existed linguistic phenomenon which has been widely studied in English. While taking a review of relevant literatures, especially the domestic ones, a lot of studies touch upon the nominalization from the perspective of grammatical metaphor and conceptual blending theory and come to a consensus that it plays a great role in the textual cohesion. Nonetheless, the previous studies contribute little to the outstanding of its deeper mechanism. This dissertation is mainly aimed at studying the formation and semantics of the deverbal -er nominalization.Nominalization is, by the definition of various dictionaries, the process through which the other word classes become the nominal by the derivation. But nominalization is not only the conversion of word class in the lexical level but also involves the structural change in the clausal level. Why does such a common language phenomenon stir up so much controversy among the linguists? As the nominalization involves both the noun and verb, what is the deciding one, verb or noun? Our study of deverbal -er nominalization mainly involves the process that a verb changes structurally into a noun. So, verb's status, root verb's transitivity or intransitivity in the clause becomes important in the overall analysis of deverbal -er nominalization. This dissertation advocates that the research should be carried out functionally and semantically, with the study of its high-level schema, rank shift and prototype as the focus. Only in that way can the hiding mechanism of deverbal -er nominalization be revealed by the systemically cognitive-functional approach.In Old English and our common sense today, -er suffixation of the deverbal nominalization means that it is the agentive of the root verb or the doer of one specific action or event, e.g., fighter, baker, in other words, its schema can be summarized as agentivity. Nonetheless, obviously the agentivity is not the highest-level schema that all the category members of deverbal -er nominalization instantiate, or the agentivity can not account for all the -er suffixation of deverbal -er nominalization in general, such as the words, bestseller, broiler, etc. This dissertation is mainly aimed at giving a systemic and coherent explanation of the formation and semantics of -er suffixation through the analysis of a large number of deverbal -er nominalization of different types.This dissertation advocates that deverbal -er suffixation actually implies a relation between an entity and process which is strikingly similar to the subject-finite relation in the clause. In other words, in order to examine the formation and semantics of deverbal -er suffixation, we have to first examine the properties of the root verb in the original clause. In the deverbal nominalization, noun—verb relation is the most important relation, while the property of the root verb is the deciding factor. Transitivity is viewed as a grammatical prototype within the prototype theory. The typical transitives, reflexive and reciprocal transitives, middle constructions and typical intransitives all belong to the different stages on the transitivity continuum. The analysis of the semantics and syntactical feature of middle construction within the prototype theory sheds new light on the middle-based deverbal -er nominalization. Besides, the lexicalized -er nominalization and ad hoc -er nominalization are also taken into account. This dissertation gives a systemic and coherent explanation of all the deverbal -er nominalization within the cognitive and functional framework.