Metaphorical Patterns Of Chinese N+N Compounds

Noun+Noun compounds are important linguistic forms in Chinese. Chinese N+Ncompounds account for the largest family and have aroused increasing attention oflinguists.A N+N compound refers to a compound noun which is comprised of two or morenouns. In this thesis, the author only examines the N+N compounds which arecomposed of xin and an arbitrary noun, with the pattern of N-N�'N, one type isxin+N, the other is N+xin. Based on the fact that Chinese N+N compounds play avital part in the process of meaning compounding, this thesis takes “xin” as anexample. N+N compounds are extracted by virtue of online corpus developed by theState Language Commission.102target Chinese N+N compounds about heart areobtained by using the standard of Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP) of ThePragglejaz. They are classified into two categories: endocentric N+N compounds andexocentric N+N compounds.Langacker points out that schema-instance relation exists between the semanticunits of language structures in his Cognitive Grammar. Semantic units can becombined into a composite structure through valence relation. In most cases, thesemantics of composite structures inherit the profile determinant of compositestructure. The target data are analyzed based on the combination of profiledeterminant, conceptual metaphor, conceptual metonymy and interaction betweenmetonymy and metaphor. Conclusions are drawn as follows: Firstly, in Chinese N+Ncompounds based on xin, endocentric N+N compounds account for95.1%whileexocentric N+N compounds account for4.9%; Secondly, according to the way inwhich metaphor and metonymy act upon modifier and profile determinant, there aretwo types of metaphorical patterns: only metaphor is involved and metaphor based-onmetonymy. Finally, when heart acts as modifier in endocentric N+N compounds, themain metaphorical patterns of N+N compounds are:“HEART IS CONCRETEOBJECT OR ENTITY,”,“HEART IS EMOTION” and “HEART IS MENTALITY”; when heart functions as profile determinant, the main metaphorical patterns of N+Ncompounds are:“HEART IS THE CENTRA OF OBJECT”,“HEART IS THE MOSTIMPORTANT PART”,“HEART IS EMOTION”, and “HEART IS MENTALITY”; inexocentric N+N Compounds, the main metaphorical patterns of N+N compounds are“HEART IS EMOTION” and “HEART IS MENTALITY”.The findings of this study help to provide evidence on such cognitive mechanismsas conceptual metaphor, metonymy and interaction between metaphor and metonymyin explaining the meaning construction of compound words. It is also useful in theunderstanding of Chinese lexical items.