A Study Of Transcategorization Of The Basic Level English Animal Terms

Throughout the long history, the survival and development of animals are closelyrelated to human beings. Since animals occupy a very important place in humansociety, the language, which reflects the human experience, covers the animal terms indetail. There are countless animal terms in English language, which are frequentlyused in daily life. English animal terms, the important component of language, havearoused much attention from linguists abroad and at home. So far, the foreignlinguists mainly focus on the conception rank of animal terms, which based on theprototype category theory. While the domestic language scholars mainly focus on thecomparison to the cultural connotation between English and Chinese animal terms. Incertain context, the English animal terms can convert to verbs. Conversion of theanimal terms not merely means the change of part of speech, but the transfer ofmeaning during the process. The transfer of meaning is realized through metaphor,which is caused by conversion. For this reason, conversion of animal terms is aprocess of transcategorization, essentially. While in academia, few scholars researchbasic level English animal terms from transcategorization perspective.Twenty animal terms from the most common and the most characteristic basiclevel English animal terms are chosen as the research object. They are dog, cat,chicken, duck, pig, sheep, cow, horse, bird, fish, lion, wolf, monkey, snake, rabbit, fox,elephant, tiger, worm, and butterfly. The theoretical bases of this study are cognitivelinguistics, systemic functional linguistics, categorization and transcategorization.Appling the method of systematic observation with reference to text, introspection,and demonstration, the author puts the basic level English animal terms at the simpleclause rank to investigate the transcategorization of these English animal terms bymeans of the corpus.Results from the study show that there are sixteen animal terms can convert toverbs, namely, dog, cat, chicken, duck, pig, cow, horse, bird, fish, wolf, monkey,snake, rabbit, fox, worm, and butterfly. The grammatical features of these Englishanimal terms are that they convert to verbs and serve as predicates or non-predicates of the sentences, and possess the meanings and grammatical functions of verbs. Someof them are transitive verbs and others are intransitive verbs. There are tense andvoice changes. And sometimes person and number changes when the verbs served aspredicates in sentences. While, both of the grammatical transcategorizaiton andsemantic transcategorization happen when the sixteen English animal terms convert toverbs. It is not only the transfer of parts of speech category (translate nouns into verbsdirectly), but also the transfer of meaning. During the process of conversion, thedescriptive meanings and action meanings are added to the animal terms. With thetransfer of the semantic focus, the static conceptual meanings of animal terms arerelatively weakened or disappear, while the dynamic meanings appear. Afterconverting English animal terms to verbs, they not only have the nature and functionof verbs, but also have the associative meaning of the motion process. Such kind ofassociative meaning is related to the action characteristics of the corresponding animal.Such kinds of words have strong semantic emergence function. That is to say,descriptive meanings and action meanings are added to the animal terms whenverbalization happens. Except this, such kinds of words can arouse readers’imagination, make the readers have a deeper understanding of the connotation of theanimal terms, and stir up the action state and image of the animal terms in readers’brain cache. The N-V conversion is the process of human cognitive activity. Itembodies metaphorically cognitive thinking processes of human.And then, the author discusses which basic level English animal terms are easyto shift class and the reasons. And the distribution of the verbalization of these basiclevel English animal terms in various types of English discourses. According to theresearch, the author finds that fish is most likely to shift class, followed by duck,snake, dog, chicken, wolf, worm, cow, horse, fox, pig, monkey, butterfly, rabbit, cat,and bird. The author thinks that there are probably four reasons may cause thefrequency difference.1. The animal term is easy to shift class if its corresponding animal’s actionfeatures are apparent. Only then can we activate the action image of the noun in ourmind. 2. The N-V conversion of animal terms and expressions have a close relationshipwith the national cultural pattern and geographical environment.3. The animal term is easy to shift class if its corresponding animal is in closecontact with human beings.4. People take animals which are common, easy to understand, and familiar to usas reference object.The research results show that there is an uneven distribution of English animalverbs among the five types of sub-corpus. Such kinds of verbs are used most widelyin fictions, and also scattered among magazines, newspapers, and spoken language.However, there are only a few English animal verbs in academic journals. This isbecause the academic journal belongs to “the formal style” or the “scientific style” ofwritten language. So we should use words carefully and seriously in academic writing.However, verbs which are converted by English animal terms produce specialrhetorical effect in writing, because they are fresh, vivifying, and humorous. Most ofthe English animal verbs are used for informal expressions. So such kinds of verbs arewildly used in fictions, but not in academic journals.