| Currently cognitive linguistics thrives to seek answers to how people acquire knowledge, whether language ability is innate or acquired and how certain linguistic forms express corresponding meanings. Cognitive semantics, like the larger enterprise of cognitive linguistics of which it is a part, has a great explanatory power of a wide range in cultural and language phenomena. The present thesis attempts to analyze the cognitive mechanism of noun-noun compounds (N+N compounds) in English and Chinese on the basis of cognitive semantics theory, specifically, within the approaches of conceptual metaphor, metonymy, blending theory and some other cognitive construal, and aims to reveal some similarities and differences in both languages by making a comparative study.The noun-noun compound has always been a controversial topic in the field of linguistic research. The noun-noun compound refers to the word which consists of two or more nominal morphemes to express a novel concept. Seemingly simple form usually contains rather complicated meaning and diversity of semantic relations. Noun-noun compound is common in a variety of human languages including English and Chinese. The thesis holds that noun-noun compound, as a linguistic phenomenon existing both in English and Chinese, is the reflection of people’s mode of thinking. Previous attention has been paid to the study on the syntactic structure and form of noun-noun compounds in the field of morphology, lexical semantics or pragmatics, etc. While less attention is paid to the cognitive mechanism of noun-noun compounds. Some important studies focus on such issue within one language, but its comparative study and analysis between English and Chinese is not sufficient at present. Since noun-noun compound reflects iconicity in form and expression on one hand, and the complex process of meaning construction and diversity of semantic relations on the other, in a broad sense, this thesis tries to go on a non-thorough study on the semantic relations of N+N compound in English and Chinese.Traditionally, metaphor and metonymy are viewed as a rhetoric device. Within the framework of cognitive semantics, as a basic mode of thinking, the notion of metaphor, metonymy theory is defined as conceptual in nature and a cognitive process in which one conceptual entity provides mental access to another entity. Conceptual blending theory is complementary to conceptual metaphor theory. Conceptual metaphor and/or metonymy can mainly act upon the following parts of noun-noun compounds:(1) on the modifying constituent;(2) on the profile determinant (head);(3) on both constituents of the compound;(4) on the compound as a whole;(5) on the relation between the two constituents of the compound. According to the five ways above, this thesis manages to analyze cognitive mechanism of noun-noun compounds from the perspectives of conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy. Besides, this thesis also analyzes cognitive mechanism of noun-noun compound from the perspective of conceptual blending based on the following semantic relations:(1) relational;(2) property-mapping;(3) conjunctive;(4) hybrid;(5) the blended;(6) composition. In addition, other construal operations (including analogy and categorization) also contribute to the formation of noun-noun compounds.What follows is a comparison of noun-noun compounds in English and Chinese. The study tries to explore the reasons for similarities and differences. On the one hand, the reasons for similarities are explained on the basis of cognitive principles. Due to the commonalities in bodily experiences, thinking process and some shared encyclopedic knowledge, there are some universal similarities of conceptual metaphor or metonymy in English and Chinese, which lead to the similarities of cognitive mechanism. On the other hand, the differences are affected by the cultural models. It is hoped that this study can shed some light on TCFL (Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language), vocabulary teaching and translation of this linguistic structure. |
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