A Cognitive Approach To "Gradable Adverb+Noun" Construction In Modern Chinese

From the perspective of traditional grammar,"Gradable adverb＋noun"(hereafter "ADV＋N") is an ungrammatical language phenomenon. With the development of language,"ADV＋N" structure is more and more accepted, understood and widely used by common people.This study is a qualitative study on "ADV＋N" construction in modern Chinese. As a controversial but widely used expression, this construction has been studied within the cognitive frameworks, based on not only the collected dada and the previous study, but also the integration of Goldberg’s Construction Grammar (GCG) and Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar (CG) two important variations of constructional approach to grammar, in order to explore its inner structures as well as its organization in man’s grammatical system.Construction grammar theory, as a theoretical framework in the present paper, includes different branches. For the sake of the present study and the development of theory, we propose the unification of GCG and CG. The unification specifies the definition of construction and widens the range of constructions. The more important thing is that it lays emphasis on both the relationship between constructions and the relationship between component structures within a composite construction, which can provide better explanation for language phenomena. We hold that the basic sense of a construction or constructional meaning comes from the core lexical items which are frequently used by the constructions or the related constructions at different schematic levels. These core lexical items constitute the basic sense of the construction which reflects man’s construal of the prototype of the physical world. In addition, the usage-based construction grammar can provide sufficient explanation for language creativity, which is more corresponding to language fact.The present paper found that the "ADV＋N" construction is the extension of the "ADV＋ADJ" construction, in which "ADV" provides the whole construction with DEGREE. We believe that the relationship between "ADV" and "N" is indirect, which actually is a constructional coercion. The construction meaning of "ADV＋N" is the "attributes to some degree", that is to say, it inherited the type of "ADV+X" construction, which we understand based on the cognitive metonymy. A noun must have the outstanding conventionality to enter the construction successfully. Through observation, we found that some proper nouns that rely on outstanding social and cultural meaning enter into this construction; some concrete nouns by highlighting its category attributes can also be accepted by the construction; and lots of abstract nouns are easy to get into "ADV＋N". And the abstract nouns are easy to become the multi-category words and accepted by people.