Towards A Cognitive Study On The Conversion Model Between English Nouns And Verbs From The Perspective Of Metaphor And Metonymy

Conversion is one of the most important means of word-formation in English. The conversion occurring between nouns and verbs, which are two basic grammatical categories, plays an important role in learning English vocabularies. The so called conversion between nouns and verbs is that it is a pervasive natural language phenomenon which nouns and verbs can be directly used as their corresponding denominal verbs and deverbal nouns. These converted verbs and nouns are endowed with new meanings and functions. Based on the fundamental theory of conceptual metonymy and conceptual metaphor, this thesis attempts to explore the process and mechanism of the conversion between nouns and verbs and tries to construct a cognitive model of conversion between nouns and verbs, which can clarify the semantic changes in the conversion.For many years, although foreign and domestic scholars’ description and explanation of conversion between nouns and verbs from lexical perspective, syntactic perspective, semantic perspective, pragmatic perspective, and cognitive perspective, etc.,have made great contributions to understanding this phenomenon, there are still some limitations. First, previous studies overstress linguistic aspect of conversion between nouns and verbs, namely the form, the syntax, the function and the meaning. However,the study on mental process and cognitive mechanism of the conversion is limited and far from perfection. Second, previous scholars overstress the metonymic nature of conversion between nouns and verbs, and relatively neglect the metaphorical nature of the conversion. They fail to explain the metonymic and metaphorical operational process of the conversion between nouns and verbs adequately. Based on the contributions and limitations in previous studies, this thesis adopts literature research,induction, introspection and speculation research method to try to explore English conversion between nouns and verbs from the perspective of metonymy and metaphor.Here we have got the following major findings:Firstly, the conversion between nouns and verbs is a process in which both of them are changed in different aspects, such as grammatical attributes, syntactic features,functions, meanings and cognition and so on. These changes are affected by people’s different ways of construal and various contexts which include linguistic contexts and non-linguistic contexts. Secondly, metonymy and metaphor are two basic cognitive means of realizing the conversion between nouns and verbs. Metonymy and metaphor are not independent but interrelated and interactive. The key to realize them is to find contiguity in metonymy and similarity in metaphor. Thirdly, based on the theories of metonymy and metaphor, this thesis analyzes and summaries the phenomenon and the process of conversion between nouns and verbs and constructs the metonymic and metaphorical operational model of English conversion between nouns and verbs, which gives a systematic and clear illustration of the process and mechanism of the conversion.Besides, from the perspective of cognitive construal, the author finds that a noun profiles a static entity, while a verb profiles a dynamic process or relation. Noun-to-verb conversion is actually a process of meaning expansion in which profiling is converted from entities to process and people’s way of construal is converted from summary scanning to sequential scanning. The utilization of noun-to-verb conversion can make the language bright and lively. On the contrary, verb-to-noun conversion is a process of meaning contraction in which profiling is converted from process to entities and people’s way of construal is converted from sequential scanning to summary scanning.The utilization of verb-to-noun conversion can make the language succinct, rigorous and full of logic.The theoretical significance of the study is that the construction and interpretation of the conversion model between English nouns and verbs provides theoretical basis for understanding the essence, the process, and the mechanism of this kind of conversion.The practical significance of the study is that the products of this thesis can be used in vocabulary teaching, second language acquisition, and the translation between English and Chinese.The limitation of the study is that it is just a preliminary part of conversion research. In further study, scholars may explore other phenomena of conversion(such as the conversion between nouns and adjectives, the conversion between verbs and adjectives, etc.) to have a more comprehensive and a more profound understanding of the phenomenon of conversion in English.