A Cognitive Approach To Nominal Tautology

Nominal tautology is a kind of common language phenomenon in dailycommunication, which is frequently used both in English and Chinese. Based on thesentences in our daily communication and examples discussed in the related articles inilluminating periods from CNKI, this thesis mainly takes “X1is ((副词)是) X2(Xstands for the noun with same form)” as the typical construction to make study byapplying the prototype theory, Ideal Cognitive Model (ICM), metonymy, anddecategrization theory in cognitive linguistics. Firstly, this paper analyzes the syntacticand semantic features of the nominal tautology, on the basis of the semantic descriptionsfor the construction, three types of nominal tautology are distinguished, which are “X1is ((副词)是) X2”,“X1is (是) X2, Y1is (是) Y2” and “X1is (是) X2, Y1is (是)Y2, Z1is (是) Z2”. Then this paper explains and analyzes the comprehending andcognition process of the three types of nominal tautology by using examplesrespectively, which aims to provide a unified account and a much better way to theunderstanding and the cognition of nominal tautology.After a series of discussion and theoretical analysis, this thesis further comes to theconclusion that it is feasible to clarify the understanding or cognition of nominaltautology by using the related theories in cognitive linguistics, and the tautologicalmeaning is not isolated from its form and each element in the construction. According tothe Prototype Theory, the comprehending or cognition of nominal tautology reflectspeople’s connatural attitudes toward category of things and their judgments for thetypical attributes of the things in certain context. Under the framework of ICM, theunderstanding is closely related to the ICMs of nouns entering into the construction ofnominal tautology. What’s more, the cognition process of nominal tautology can be seenas the process in which the object loses characteristics of its original category, which isdecategrization process. Accordingly, the deduction process of the meaning of nominaltautology can be explained by the metonymy theory.