The Semantic Exploration Of Langacker’s Language Units Division

The American linguist Langacker published two volumes of“Foundations of Cognitive Grammar”successively in 1987 and 1991 andpublished“Grammar and conception”in 2000. These books established anew subject which is called cognitive grammar. Cognitive grammarevoked strong repercussions around linguistic circles. Taylor (1996) andLakoff (1987) also discussed about cognitive grammar. Taylor published“cognitive grammar”in 2002 to analyze Langacker’s cognitive grammarcomprehensively and spoke highly about it. Taylor indicated thatLangacker’s cognitive grammar which had been widely accepted bylinguists was becoming a part of mainstream language theory in a sensein his book“cognition grammar”published in 2002. At the same time, healso added much new content in his book, and answered some queriesabout cognitive grammar. During the research of cognitive grammartheory, one crucial question is brought up: what is the core content incognitive grammar theory? There are six parts in cognitive grammartheory system. They are 1)Linguistic Semantics；2) Dimensions ofImagery；3) Grammar as Image；4)Grammatical Organization；5)Grammatical Classes；6) Grammatical Constructions.The research to these six parts of cognitive grammar theory showsthat the six parts of contents expound the cognitive grammar theory allaround the“symbol structure”. Therefore we can say“symbol structure”(symbol unit) is the core content of cognitive grammar theory. That is tosay that cognitive grammar is to analyze how the language units constructto express meanings. For the construction of language units, weemphasize the integration of language units instead of the combination oflanguage units. If we want to further study cognitive grammar, we mustbegin from the core theory of cognitive grammar--language unit theory.Langacker reiterates that phonology unit, semantic unit and symbolic unitare the only units to explain all language phenomenons. Symbolic unit composes of phonology unit and semantic unit. Symbolic unit is alsocalled symbolic structure. Any language expressions includingmorphemes, words, phrases, sentences and discourse are symbolic units.Contrasting Chomsky’s generative grammar, Langacker consider thatlanguage is not an autonomy cognitive system, but a conventional anddynamic collection of symbol units. Symbolic units express meaningthrough various integrations of language units. Thus language units arecomponentiality and correspondence. Language units are conventional.The definitions of the language units are dynamic and variable. HowLangacker’s language unit theory analyzes meaning? Langacker andexperts at home and abroad made a lot of analysis taking English as theexample. However, can Langacker’s language unit theory analyzeChinese? This paper takes both English and Chinese as examples toanalyze meanings about English and Chinese with Langacker’s languageunit theory. At the same time I list large corpora to analyze meaning aboutChinese with phonological unit, semantic unit, and symbolic unit. I alsoanalyze the organizing relationships of Chinese. The componentiality andcorrespondence of Chinese also be mentioned. In the process of analysis Ifind that the dynamic and uncertainty of definitions of language unitsabout Chinese theory are stronger. As the word class division of Chineseis not clear itself. There is only lexicon in Chinese. We apply thelanguage units theory methods analyzing English to analyze Chinese isdifficult. Langacker’s language unit theory used for Chinese is to befurther complement. Chinese semantic analysis is to be studied further.