A Cognitive Study Of Chinese Potential New X Zu Compounds

With the drastic development of the society, human beings' cognition and understanding of things have witnessed fundamental changes. The languages which they use for communication are also changing a lot. There are three parts inlanguage-phone, vocabulary, and grammar, among which vocabulary is the mostdynamic one. One of the remarkable features is that a great deal of new compounds are emerging and coming into vogue. Language researchers pay much attention to this phenomenon. However, most of the previous studies on Chinese new compounds focused on their classification, form and meaning, as well as the social motivations. The research on the cognitive mechanism of Chinese new compounds is far from perfection. The frame semantics is just from the perspective of understanding instead of generation to a large extent. Based on frame semantics, metaphor, metonymy, as well as analogy, this thesis chooses to study the concept representing features of the attributive part in Chinese potential new X zu compounds from the generating perspective through analysis, induction and introspection and aims to discover the factors influencing the comprehensibility of Chinese potential new X zu compounds.We are going to simulate the ACT EVENT frames represented by the attributive parts of Chinese potential new X zu compounds, based upon the descriptive analysis and explanation of the Chinese compounds we collected from Chinese dictionary:《汉语新词新语年编》,《中国语言生活状况报告(2006)》,《中国语言生活状况报告(2007)》, together with the authoritative internet or newspapers. Moreover, we aim to classify the frame elements represented by the attributive parts and to define the hierarchies where these elements locate on. We find out that among all of the frame elements represented by the attributive parts in Chinese potential new X zu compounds, the type of "ACTION+PATIENT" accounts for the most.This thesis also holds that the comprehensibility of Chinese potential new X zu compounds is closely related to element ellipsis of the attributive parts. The more ellipsis when represented, the more difficult to be understood. Conversely, it is less difficult. Namely, it is more difficult for us to understand those compounds with higher lexicalization. The comprehensibility is also concerned with the hierarchies these elements locate on. The more hierarchies the element represented by the attributive part locate away from where AGENT locates on, the obscurer the meaning of the construction will be. When creating Chinese potential new X zu compounds based on frames, people select different perspectives and profile different elements. Therefore there are laws to abide by from the aspects of lexicalization, word construction, and the predication of the attributive parts.The thinking instruments of the attributive parts representing concepts in Chinese potential new X zu compounds are mostly metaphor, metonymy, and analogy. We find that most of the attributive parts come out through the way of metaphor, among which animal metaphor accounts for the most. Metonymy is a more fundamental cognitive way than metaphor. In the meanwhile, analogy is also one of the main cognitive methods in the formation of Chinese potential new X zu compounds.Based on frame semantics, this thesis makes a comparatively comprehensive and systematical study on the attributive parts of Chinese potential new X zu compounds from a cognitive perspective, reveals the influential laws of the frame elements and the hierarchies they locate on on the comprehensibility of the attributive parts, and also explores the relationship between element/hierarchy and the comprehensibility of the whole compound. This thesis chooses to do research from the perspective of diachrony generating, which might be more unitary in the foundation of explanation and theoretical generalization. This study has a significance in explaining how language changes and could be standardized.