Noun-noun Compounding In Chinese And Cognitive Motivation

Chinese metaphorical and/or metonymical noun-noun compound is productive inChinese. These kinds of combination reflect clarity in form and expression of language.Language is a mirror of social life, and also like microscope which can reflect socialchanges.English noun-noun compounds have been studied for many years with thedevelopment of cognitive linguistic, so we can study the Chinese metaphorical andmetonymical noun-noun compounds according to the former study of Englishcompounds. The former research on Chinese metaphorical and/or metonymicalnoun-noun compound mainly about the analysis of formation, the syntactic and thesemantic relationship between the two nouns, it cannot explain all semanticrelationship, however, from cognitive perspective we can systematically explaining allmetaphorical and/or metonymical noun-noun compounds.According to different understanding ways of metaphorical and metonymical,Chinese metaphorical and metonymical noun-noun compounds are classified intometaphor-based noun-noun compounds, metonymy-based noun-noun compounds,metaphor-and metonymy-based noun-noun compounds. Then from linguisticperspective, I analyzed these compounds in detail based upon the theory of conceptualmetaphor and conceptual metonymy.The dissertation addresses two questions:(1) How many types of semanticrelationships between two noun constituents in Chinese metaphorical and/ormetonymical noun-noun compounds? And what are they?(2) What are the cognitivemotivations for metaphorical and metonymical understanding of Chinese noun-nouncompounds?As the research will show, Chinese metaphorical and metonymical noun-nouncompounds can be analysed systematically, and we can identified them according towhich part of the compound is activated by conceptual metaphor or conceptualmetonymy: the modifier of the compound; the profile determinant of the compound;the relationship between the modifier and the profile determinant; or the compound asa whole.Metaphorical and/or metonymical noun-noun compound is a part of noun-nouncompounds. The similarity between them and other types of noun-noun compounds isthat the understanding of compounds is based upon the semantic relationship between the two constituents of the compound. However, metaphorical and/or metonymicalnoun-noun compound refers to metaphorical and/or metonymical construal besides that.The cognitive study on metaphorical and/or metonymical noun-noun compounds showthat the role of metaphor and metonymy is promoted from rhetoric means of languageexpression to important thinking way of human being, discuss their’s effect onlanguage comprehension.