An Online Corpus-based Study On English Deverbal Nominalization-er And-ee Systems

The division between nouns and verbs and their interchangeable conversion are theuniversality of the human’s languages. Moreover, the device of nominalization is acommon phenomenon in English. According to its definition, nominalization is derivedfrom words of the other classes. English is a language featured with nominalization.The deverbal-er,-ee nominal belong to the most productive, representative, systematicbranch in the nominalization family system. Their productive features and thebelonging semantic constructional mechanisms display that the two branches havepossessed the scale of a system. From the systematic perspective of the relationship ofagentive and patientive, the two represent the basis cognitive mechanism of the human.Owing to the frequencies of use, the structure gradually tends to turn to the process ofsolidification, automation and dynamic evolution in their forms.However in the evolvement of the two systems, they have transcended the purelabel of agent or patient, and the relationship has become more and more complicatedand confusing. They have formed their own system respectively. No matter in OldEnglish or people’s common thoughts the suffix of-er is the represent of agent, and itpossesses the agentive property, such as the word “teacher, worker, dancer”. Similarlythe suffix of-ee, which was the counterpart of-er, isn’t the represent of patient of thebase verb attributed with the patientive feature any more, such as the vocabulary“employee, interviewee”. However, as the evolution of the two systems, the label ofagent-profiling or patient-profiling are not able to illustrate all the-er and-eenominalizations. Thus the property of agentive or patientive is not the highestschematics of the two systems. As it is known, a nominalization derived from otherword classes with an innovative feature would not bring confusion for man tounderstand. Apparently the derivation does not only take place as it seems to be in thesurface, and what’s the underlying mechanism of it is worthy to uncover. Based on theanalysis of instantiations, the semantic conversion is not arbitrary, on the contrary it ismotivated. Then what are the underlying rules and the radical motivations of thismechanism? Does it conform to human’s cognition system? Accounted for the abovevarious confusions, the paper mainly study on the following research questions in detail:1) Are the ratios of deverbal-er and-ee homologous with each other? If not, thenwhat are the specific features like?2) What are the features of the verb root of the deverbal-er and-ee? And how thetwo systems could be classified?3) What is the internal mechanism of deverbal-er and-ee systems?The present research tries to studied on the systems of-er and-ee from thecognitive-functional perspective, based on the data collected from COCA corpus. Thepaper refers to the methods of combining the quantitative study and qualitative study,using the COCA corpus (Corpus of Contemporary American English) as the tool, inorder to make a systematic and multi-functional analysis of the typical andrepresentative systems. So as to we can know about the underlying motivation behindthe language device, and try to conclude the constructional mechanism of this type ofnominalization. The COCA corpus is an online corpus, which is convenient for the userat any place and any time. And its belonging properties designate that it is not onlyadvantageous in the huge capacity, but also lie in the update information which itprovides.Through detailed and scientific research, the research findings are presented asfollowing:1) Trough the collected analysis of COCA corpus, it was found that theproportions of the-er and-ee are not balanced, and the gap is large. Among them theratio of agentive-er is the largest one (88%), while the rest three are comparativelybalanced with each other (3%,4%,5%). Accounted for the qualitative study of theinstantiations, it is found that the reason should tracked back to the Prominence Law ofthe human’s cognition rule. In human’s cognitive domain, the agent of the verb root isthe most salient one compared with other entities, therefore it is easiest one to beprofiled. 2) Through the induction and analysis of the semantics of-er and-ee systems, it isfound that the base verb of the clause plays a fundamental role in the process ofsemantic construction. In other words, the grammatical properties of verb root designatethe feature and category of the-er and-ee nominal, and it is the base verb that motivatethe underlying the constructional mechanism of the systems.3) Based on the analysis of the base verb of the-er nominal, it is inducted that theverb root mainly includes two categories: the agentive-er is agent of the base verb; andaccording to the analysis of the deep structure of the non-agentive-er, it is found thatthe non-agentive-er is the subject of the base verb in the middle clause. Namely thecommonplace of the two categories is that the subject within the context is profiled.4) As to the study of-ee nominal, the assumption that the agentive-ee possessesthe patientive property to some extent is overthrown. The relation between the baseverb and-ee nominal can also be inducted with the past participle of the verb: therelation between patientive-ee and base verb is passive construction; while the agentive-ee displays the past-participle construction.As to the above mentioned research findings, in the first place theoretically theywould contribute to the induction of the exploration of the semantic constructionmechanism and the underlying motivation. Secondly they would also bring conveniencefor the understanding and mastery of the confusing and intricate semantics of the twosystems, and does make contribution for the study of English users in the mastery of thecomplicated, productive and ambiguous vocabularies. Therefore they are meaningfulfor the exploration of semantic constructional mechanism.