Noun-Verb Conversion As Conceptual Metonymy: A Comparison Between English And Chinese

Conversion has always been a hot topic in the field of linguistic research.Previous researches have done a lot of study to the conversion between nouns and verbs from the perspective of morphology,lexical semantics or pragrnatics etc.The present thesis attempts to analyze the cognitive mechanism or cognitive motivation of noun-verb conversion in English and Chinese on the basis of the conceptual metonymy theory.In addition,the thesis tries to make a comparative study of noun-verb conversion in English and Chinese to reveal the similarities and differences,and to explore the reasons for the similarities and differences.Conversion is a process whereby a word of a certain word class is shifted into a word of another word class without the addition of an affix.Noun-Verb conversion,as a linguistic phenomenon,is common in a variety of human languages including English and Chinese.The thesis holds that noun-verb conversion,as a language phenomenon existing both in English and Chinese,is the reflection of people's metonymic mode of thinking.Traditionally,metonymy is viewed as a process of substituting one linguistic expression for another,or a relation in which one linguistic expression "stands for" another.The cognitive view holds that as a basic mode of thinking,metonymy is conceptual in nature and should be defined as a cognitive process in which one conceptual entity,the vehicle,provides mental access to another conceptual entity,the target,within the same idealized cognitive model.Metonymy is a basic mode of thinking used in everyday communication.Conceptual metonymy not only serves as the cognitive motivation of noun-verb conversion,but is also crucial to the understanding of the process of conversion.The thesis points out that noun-verb conversion mainly occurs in the Action ICM,and the conceptual relationships within the ICM may give rise to conceptual metonymy.Action ICM involves a variety of Participants,like Agent,Patient,Instrument,Place,Manner,Result and Time.According to cognitive linguistics,all the participants and the action itself possess different cognitive salience.Thus,because of the difference in salience,the participants and the action itself may be perceived differently in different circumstances.The one which perceives more cognitive salience is considered to be used to provide mental access to the other one and to stand for the other one.All the participants involved in the occurrence of an action can be called "Thing",and then we can further say that the noun-to-verb conversion occurs under the conceptual metonymy "THING FOR ACTION",while the verb-to-noun conversion occurs under the conceptual metonymy "ACTION FOR THING".What follows is a comparison of noun-verb conversion in Chinese and English.The thesis presents a demonstration of the motivations or reasons for the differences and similarities.On the one hand,the reasons for the similarities are explained on the basis of cognitive principles which determine the selection of vehicles of conceptual metonymy, such as human experience and perceptual selectivity.Due to the commonalities in bodily experiences,thinking process and some shared encyclopedia knowledge and social experiences,there are some universal similarities of conceptual metonymies in English and Chinese,which lead to the similarities of noun-verb conversion in the two languages. On the other hand,as two different languages,there must be some differences.The study tries to explore the reasons for the differences from the point of view of cultural models and other principles of language use,i.e.the principle of least effort and the principle of clarity.