A Cognitive Perspective Of Chinese And English Classifiers

This paper perceives Chinese and English classifiers from a Cognitive perspective. Focuses are placed on the motivation and special usages of classifiers. Classifier in Cognitive Grammar is also a topic of analysis.As a distinctive character of the Chinese language, Classifiers as an individual part of speech have reasonably attracted the attention of scholars. Different from Chinese, English Classifiers do not constitute a word class; consequently, there exist various terminologies and classifications of them in authoritative grammar books. After a brief introduction, the second chapter of this paper– Literature Review– first generalizes the researches of Chinese classifiers home and abroad, and then implements a detailed examination of the different definitions and illustrations, drawing a conclusion on the parts they resemble, differ and overlap, in a hope to clarify the scope of English Classifiers and provide a basis for cognitive research. Also arising from close examination is the finding that Classifier is a superior choice for the translation of"量词", because the other popular terms have obvious weaknesses: the term Partitive highlights a part and whole relationship, moreover, it's more of a grammar structure than a word class; Quantifiers are actually quantifying Determiners, words like all, both, any etc., and their overlapping scopes with Chinese Classifiers are only those phrases that have been recognized by cognitive grammar to be grammaticalized, for example: bags of, lots of and a bunch of; terms like Species Nouns, Unit Nouns are still Nouns in English. This is not in accordance with the independency of Chinese Classifiers as an individual part of speech. In addition, Classifier is a generally accepted term.In Cognitive Grammar, English is a singular-plural language,whose nouns display a singular-plural difference, while Chinese is a numeral-classifier language, in which nouns are quantified with the help of a numeral and a classifier. Section One of Chapter Four illustrates how Chinese quantifies nouns without the help of numerals or classifiers. Some of these exceptions are vestiges of ancient Chinese language and some others are triggered by the semantic domain of"People"and"Time". In Cognitive Grammar, the conceptual structure of a Chinese classifier phrase is in line with the canonical nominal structure of(Grounding(Quantification(Instantiation(Specification(Type))))), for example,一张红色的纸(a piece of red paper). The key factor of the conceptual structure of the English classifier nominal lies in the intrinsic relationship between the two things that the preposition of profiles, e.g. a flock of geese. By virtue of the co-existence of both the flock and geese, cognitive grammar recognizes the possibility of two"heads"of a nominal, the choice of which is dependent on different construals. This article emphasizes a distinction between a"structural head"and a"conceptual head", concluding that a classifier is the structural head of a classifier phrase while both the noun and the classifier can be the conceptual head.Classifiers and their usages are motivated rather than arbitrary. Many basic principles of cognitive linguistics can find concrete realization in classifiers. Through the study of classifier phrases, 7 conceptual metaphors have been generalized, namely: +EMOTIONS AS LIGHT+,+HOPE AS LIGHT+,+SMARTNESS AS LIGHT+,+情感是光束+,+情感是丝线+,+希望是光束+,+智慧是光线+. Through the examples of"a drop of pride"and"一抹晨曦"etc., the efficiency of Conceptual Integration Theory in the comprehension of classifier phrases has been demonstrated.The function of Conceptual Metonymy in classifier phrases has also been analyzed. +PART FOR WHOLE+,+WHOLE FOR PART+,+CONTAINER FOR CONTENT+,+CONCRETE FOR ABSTRACT+,+CAUSE FOR EFFECT+ have been concluded after phrase examination.The realization of Image Schema in classifier phrases comes to the surface after close study, including Container Schema, Part-whole Schema and Center-Periphery Schema.The classifier fit which co-occurs with a relatively smaller collection of nouns has been examined as one case study. Categorization Theory is emphatically used here in the explanation of One Classifier for Multiple Objects.This paper distinguishes between a Superficial Case from a Real Case of One Noun with Multiple Classifiers, claiming that the former is the collocation of different classifiers with one noun but the noun has different referents and the latter is the different choices of classifiers for one single referent of a noun on the basis of Subjective Prominence.For the recognition of the classifier omitted in Classifier Omission phenomenon of Chinese, this paper employs Idealized Cognitive Model for analysis.On account of the ambition of this paper to implement a panoramic cognitive survey of classifiers, the possibility to go to great details in every aspect has been influenced to a certain extent. Arising from this tentative research is the revelation of a shared conceptual basis of both Chinese and English.