A Cognitive Study Of Semantic Extensions From Parent Nouns To Denominal Verbs In English

Polysemy is one of the important study targets in modern linguistic research. As one kind of polysemy phenomenon, denominal verbs have their own attributes and characteristics. The denominal verb refers to the verb originated from nouns (Clark&Clark1979:769), the generation of which is viewed as zero derivation by some scholars. In other words, a verb is derived from a noun without any literally morphological change. The nature of denominal verbs is in fact a type of metonymy because it is a particular conversion between the parent noun and the verb. It is also a conversion process of human mind on the basis of human experience.The denominal verb is an innovative language phenomenon either in English or in Chinese. The use of denominal verbs is common and flexible in daily life. Many linguistic scholars from home and abroad have studied the denominal verbs from various perspectives such as grammar, syntax, and pragmatics. However, few of them pay attention to the cognitive semantic study of denominal verbs.The Principled Polysemy Approach is proposed by Tyler and Evans (2001,2003) to study polysemy, especially to analyze the English preposition over. Based on the theory of the Principled Polysemy Approach, this paper mainly discusses denominal verbs in English from the perspective of cognitive semantics to explore the cognitive relationship between the parent noun and the denominal verb.This paper attempts to provide a comprehensive theoretical analysis of the semantic extensions from parent nouns to English denominal verbs from a cognitive semantic perspective. Meanwhile, this paper aims to help people understand the way that the production and the use of the semantic extensions from parent nouns to denominal verbs in English are based on human embodied experience, and to find the regulations and trends of denominal verbs in English in terms of the semantic extensions from parent nouns to semantic extensions.Based on the classification of Clark&Clark (1979), this paper illustrates and analyzes nine categories of denominal verbs:Locatum Verbs, Location Verbs, Duration Verbs, Agent Verbs, Experience Verbs, Goal Verbs, Source Verbs, Instrument Verbs and Miscellaneous Verbs. In the analysis of the typical example on each kind of denominal verbs, this paper firstly reviews each of their primary meanings, and then analyzes their semantic extensions between senses, combined with their usage and diachronic development.The study of this paper finds that the semantic extensions from parent nouns to denominal verbs can be divided into two types:the divergent type and the chain type. There are four kinds of semantic extensions from parent nouns to denominal verbs:the one-to-one relationship; one-to-many relationship; many-to-many relationship, and many-to-one relationship. In the semantic extensions from parent nouns to denominal verbs, some verb senses are directly derived from the primary meanings or proto-senses of noun senses. Some verb senses are derived from the noun senses which are arisen from the primary meanings or proto-senses of noun senses. That means the verb sense is indirectly derived from the primary meaning or proto-sense of noun senses. Through the generalization and summarization of the similarities and differences of the semantic extensions from parent nouns to denominal verbs, along with the tentative analysis of the causes, this study finds that not every sense can have the extended meaning, and that not every sense is directly derived from the proto-sense. The features of thinking and psychology and the diachronic development of language are the external drive of the semantic extensions from parent nouns to denominal verb. Having experienced a long period of synchronic and diachronic evolution, based on different human embodied experience and used in different contexts, the semantic extensions from parent nouns to denominal verbs turn to be different.This paper confirms that the semantic extensions from parent nouns to denominal verbs are based on the human experience and integrated with the pragmatic reasoning process. In the semantic extensions from parent nouns to denominal verbs, the mutual combination and promotion of human embodied experience and pragmatic inference process are advancing the development of the semantic extensions from parent nouns to denominal verbs.