A Cognitive Linguistic Probe Into "Degree Adverb+Noun" Structure

It has been traditionally considered grammatical that adverbs take an adjective, while when an adverb takes a noun; it is often taken as ungrammatical, or at least irregular. However in the past few decades, there was a prevalence of such kind of phrases as hen zhongguo (very China-like), hen nvren (very lady-like), hen A Q (very Ah Q-like) in our daily conversation, the mass media and some written works. This structure can help to express one's view vividly and thoroughly instead of causing misunderstanding.Early studies took it as a temporary transformation of parts of speech in conventional grammar; recent studies have been conducted from semantic, pragmatic, syntactic, and functional perspectives, however, less concerns with the nature of"degree adverb+ noun"structure and the cognitive process of"degree adverb+ noun"structure interpretation. Therefore, this study aims to explore the nature of"degree adverb+ noun"structure, trying to give a detailed analysis of"degree adverb+ noun"structure. To be more specific, our purpose is to explain how the utterance effect of"degree adverb + noun"structure is achieved from a cognitive linguistic perspective by using cognitive linguistic key terms like metonymy, conceptual blending theory.Starting from an introduction of"degree adverb+ noun"structure, this thesis conducts the study from a cognitive linguistic perspective. We propose that"degree adverb+ noun"structure is the external form of metonymy, it is metonymic by nature. People tend to use the most salient aspect of a person, object, idea, or event to refer to the person, object, ideas or event as a whole. By metonymic projection, the noun is projected onto some descriptive characteristics of the"noun"in"degree adverb+ noun"structure, and then the descriptive characteristics are selectively projected onto the blended space of"degree adverb+ noun"together with the degree adverb. Through the three operational principles—COMPOSITION, COMPLETION, ELABORATION, which are believed to guide the whole cognitive process, the"degree adverb+ noun"structure is formed. Therefore, we conclude that metonymy and conceptual blending theory are complementary in the interpretation of"degree adverb +noun"structure.