Study On Event Nouns Of Modern Chinese Language

Event nouns of modern Chinese language are subcomponents of nouns. Event nouns notonly have the grammatical functions of common nouns, but also have some differentgrammatical functions from common nouns. This research use the archetypal elements ofevent nouns as the study objects to discuss syntactic、semantic and cognize features of them.To determine the archetypal elements of event nouns needs three groups of identifyingframes, through those frames we can determine the most typical events nouns. We use eachmeaning of the words as unit and exclude the sememe which cannot offer the meaning ofevent nouns to become the archetypal elements of event nouns; the archetypal elements aredivided into fifteen categories include natural phenomena、 war、 disaster、 conference、competition、entertainment、cultural and exercise、diet、manners、dream、 disease、exam、curriculum、time and activity.The syntactic functions of event nouns are mainly using as subject、 accusative andattributive, also can be modified by quantitative phrase、 nouns、 adjectives、 verbs andpersonal pronouns when use as central words. In addition, event nouns can combined withsome localizers such as “before、after and between.” The function differences between eventnouns and other nouns mainly reflect on subject、 object、 attribute、 adverbial modifier、predicate and central word.Event nouns possess spatiality、holistic、timeliness and procedural semantic features. Theholistic semantic features of event nouns use spatiality as foundation, plus the proceduralsemantic features of event nouns use timeliness and spatiality as foundations. The spatialityand holistic features of event nouns can be used as subject and accusative in sentence； thetimeliness feature on syntax can be showed as modifying by timing phrases or as combiningwith localizers in sentence to describe the definition of time instead of the definition of space;the procedural features of event nouns can be applied as modifying by verbal phrases insentence.The spatiality、holistic、timeliness and procedural semantic features of event nouns canall be traced from cognition. Also, the semantic features relate the attention choosing problemin main body of cognition.This kind of main body of cognition attention choice reflects on thecombination of event nouns with localizers and the ambiguity of the structure:“event nouns+before/after+quantifier phrases.” The phenomenon of ambiguity not only due to semanticfeatures of the event nouns, but also due to attention choice from main body of cognition.Therefore, the attention choice from the main body of cognition has great impact on the semantic features of event nouns expression.