Study On Cognitive Mechanisms Of Unconventional Classifier Structure In Chinese

As an independent word class in Chinese language system,"classifier"is taken to quantify people, things, and movements. Working with numerals, it has the function of mensuration. Generally, a classifier can collocate conventionally with some words bearing certain meanings. Whereas in actual language expressions, especially in literature works, some classifiers can unconventionally collocate with other words, or some words belonging to other word classes can be used as classifiers. In this case, the classifiers have rhetorical function besides mensuration, so they deserve much research value either from linguistic perspective or literary perspective. Taking classifiers to modify nouns can form classifier-noun collocations, for which a generic name"classifier structure"is called. Up to now, studies on conventional classifier structure have been relatively mature, while for the unconventional classifier structure, most of researches focus on its involved figures of speech and rhetorical function. Recently, some scholars have tried to interpret such structure from cognitive perspective, whereas these studies are not thorough and profound enough. The unconventional classifier structure, as a special language phenomenon, appears frequently in literature works. This study collects the language examples in literature works from relevant papers thoroughly. These examples are further analyzed for their cognitive motivation and construction mechanisms, with a purpose to reveal the cognitive basis of this unconventional classifier structure's rhetorical effects. Besides, corpus is employed to inspect the distrubution of unconventional classifier structure in different text types. This research is a succession and development of the studies on UCS, and the results are expected to have practical significance for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One provides the general background against which the present research is made, the aims located, the methodology employed, the significance identified, and the organization arranged. Chapter Two is literature review, which includes the definition of"unconventional classifier structure", general review of the studies on classifier structure, and intensive review of the studies on unconventional classifier structure. Chapter Three devotes to the concepts of"similarity"and"contiguity", the theories of"metaphor"and"metonymy". Chapter Four is a thorough analysis of the linguistic data with an application of the relevant theories. Firstly, the collected unconventional collocations are classified according to the classifiers'different origins. Then the complicated relations between the referents of the classifier and the noun in each group are identified; on the basis of the relations, the cognitive mechanisms used to construct the unconventional collocations are also revealed; meanwhile, some figures are made to present the constructing process. At last, the pragmatic functions of unconventional classifier structure, the general motives of unconventional classifier structure, and the distribution of unconventional classifier structure in different text types are discussed. Chapter Five provides the conclusion.The findings of the present study show that the unconventional classifier structure involves three kinds of cognitive construction mechanisms: metaphor construction mechanism based on similarity, metonymy construction mechanism based on contiguity, and direct construction mechanism based on unconventional collocation relation. The last mechanism relies on the first or the second one; the complexity of the mechanisms'combination determines the construal difficulty of unconventional classifier structure. Besides, through the analysis of language examples, we find that the words taken as classifiers in the structure can be nouns, verbs, adjectives, and fixed classifiers. Similarity includes essential similarity, factual similarity, occasional similarity and imposed similarity; contiguity mainly covers Part-Whole relation, Category-Property relation, Container-Content relation, Bearing-Being Borne relation, Image-Impression relation. The unconventional collocations constructed on a basis of similarity can be commonly found, while the ones constructed on a basis of Image-Impression possess great aesthetic taste.