A Study Of Adjectival Past Participles In English Noun Phrases

Some past participles can be used as premodifiers in English noun phrases.Linguists call these past participles Adjectival Past Participles (APPs for short). APPsare widely found in English and have always been important topics in the study ofEnglish grammar. Meanwhile, they are difficult points in English teaching and learning.For APPs are premodifiers derived from verbs, limitations and constraints exist in theirusages. Not all past participles can be used as APPs in English noun phrases. Someone-word past participles are qualified to be used as premodifiers while some othershave to function with other modifiers or prefixes. Moreover, the usage of a pastparticiple as APP may differ in different collocations.Linguists from different schools at home and abroad provide their views on theconstraints and complicatedness of the uses of APPs, including the studies in traditionalgrammar, studies from the perspective of pragmatics and studies in cognitive grammar.Based on the previous research, this thesis attempts to examine the cognitivemechanism underlying the usages of APPs from the perspective of subcategorization.Firstly, the thesis discusses the categorial status of APPs. It is well known thatcognitive categories have no definite boundaries and category members do not share thesame status. There are prototypes and marginal members. APP constitutes the fuzzy areabetween the verb category and the adjective category. It belongs to the adjectivecategory but is the peripheral member, which explains the reason why past participlescan be used as premodifiers. At the same time, APP also belongs to the verb categorybut is the peripheral member, which explains the reason why the usages of APPs haslimitations.Secondly, the thesis mainly analyzes the cognitive mechanism of the constraints onthe usages of APPs according to the theory of subcategorization. Subcategorization is amental process of classifying the known categories into two contrastive subcategories. The cognitive function of APPs is to subcategorize the things denoted by the head nounin English noun phrases. More precisely, the category denoted by the noun issubcategorized from the perspective of the attributes indicated by the APPs. The processof subcategorization as a cognitive function of APPs has two characteristics. One is thattwo contrastive subcategories are supposed to exist objectively in the world. The otheris that the process of subcategorization should take a permanent attribute possessed bysome category members as the reference point. The past participles that can be used asAPPs correspond with the two principles. They indicate a relatively permanent attributeand they are able to subcategorize the category denoted by the head nouns into twocontrastive subcategories that can be found in the real world. Some past participles haveto function with their own modifiers, like adverbs, or the negative prefix un-as APPs,because by adding the modifier or the prefix, the implied contrastive subcategories existobjectively, which makes sure of the success of the subcategorization. Besides, somepast participles can be used as APPs in different collocations. This also mainly dependson whether the contrastive subcategories implied by the combination of the pastparticiple and the head noun exist or not.Moreover, the uses of APPs are also influenced by the social development. Somecontrastive subcategories may disappear and some new pairs may emerge with thedevelopment of the society. Accordingly the uses of some APPs may change.