| According to the theory of prototype category, prototype nouns have basic meanings and forms, but in some conditions, nouns exceed general rules by shifting in function and gradually losing some of the typical features of prototype category, while obtaining some features in new category, which is called decategorization.There are diverse syntactic expressions in functional shifting, for example nouns obtain verb characteristics, i.e., they distribute the predicate location, collocate with object, complement, tense label and overlap, and nouns obtain adjective features, i.e. Adv + N, Na+ Nb , N+地, N1+ (Adv)shi+N2 , AAX (adj. +adj. + X) and so on.The essential driving force for the functional shifting of nouns lies in the semantic foundation and cognitive mentality. Syntactic structure is the activate factor, and has adverse restrict role on semantic. Nouns are not static in semantic, but dynamic. The semantic of noun often contains the action meaning and adjective meaning. Every noun composes a cognitive category."thing"and"relation","category"and"property"which generate metonymy usage, lie in the same cognitive structure, and based on that, the paper discusses the shift between the thing meaning, the natural meaning and the action meaning.The paper summarises main characteristics of noun decategorization: when decategorized, nouns will lose some of the distributional features syntactically and referential meaning, become subjective and general semantically, and obtain new discoursive functions pragmatically, ending in category shift. Besides, they will lose the discoursive function of introducing participants. Noun decategorization not only makes the value of the semantic and function added, but also bring in specific pragmatic effect.
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