The Study Of The Unconventional Usage Of Classifiers From The Viewpoint Of Metaphor Theory And Mental Spaces Theory

The subject of this thesis is the unconventional usage of classifiers in modern Chinese poems, lyrics, and proses from three aspects:the first is the viewpoint of metaphor theory; the second, the categorization theory; the third, the blending theory of the mental spaces.The first chapter is an introduction of the research background as motivation, purpose, theories and methods of the thesis. The second chapter reviewed the history of the study, and the literature from other researchers. The third chapter explained the examples from the poems and lyrics and explained the effect of the classifiers in metaphor. The forth chapter discussed the use of the shape-meaning classifiers and the animal-meaning classifiers. The fifth chapter explained the meaning-changing of the classifier "ZHU" (柱) as a process of categorization and the function of this classifier to shape the image of the nouns which are modified by it. The sixth chapter is a conclusion of the entire thesis.The unconventional usage of the Chinese classifiers with conflicts and is harmonies puts the classical image of these classifiers into more and more different categories to trigger further categorization and so proposes a new image what the nouns modified by these classifiers.I hrough the methods of metaphor projection and blending of difference spaces, the whole image of the nouns with their modifiers, i.e. the classifiers, have certain relevance with the prototypical meaning of these modifiers. This is why poets use to adopt such unconventional measures to create new images.