The CPSM Naming Model From Cognitive Sociolinguistic Perspective

A place name is the proper name given to a geographical entity. The formation of place names is not only the result of people's cognition of the physical world but also a social activity which results from people's participating in various social activities. Toponymy is the scientific study of place name. Although Chinese scholars have studied toponymy for a long time and have left many valuable documentary heritages, what they concentrate more on is Chinese place names. As for foreign place names, scholars have made various study of toponyms from the perspective of etymology, sociolinguistics and cultural linguistics. However, most of these researches that focus on discussing origins of foreign place names, are relatively dispersed and unsystematic. Even though there are studies which have researched the naming mechanism of foreign topontyms from the angle of Cognitive Linguistics, what those studies have paid attention to is some superficial aspects, ignoring the great impact of social factors on the cognitive process of place name.In order to bridge the gap, this thesis takes the cognitive reference point(CRP) model as the basic model with the supplement of the Perspective theory and the Salience theory as well as Metonymy to construct a new theoretical naming model——CPSM model(C stands for the CRP model, P signifies the Perspective theory, S refers to the Salience theory, M denotes Metonymy) from the cognitive sociolinguistic point of view. In the meantime, a self-closed database containing names of states and capitals of the United States is established so as to study them qualitatively on the basis of the CPSM model.Based on the deficiencies of previous studies, we find that the CRP model, the Salience theory, the Perspective theory and Metonymy can become complementary each other and integrate into the CPSM model to explain the cognitive mechanism, the salient elements and the socio-cultural connotation behind foreign place names. From the above naming model, 13 main naming patterns have been summarized from names of states and capitals of the United States, and the cognitive mechanism of all place names is metonymy. In addition, the salient factors during the place naming process are closely linked with the Native American culture, historic celebrities, major historic events as well as the colonial history of America.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one introduces the motivation of this study, the objective, the methodology as well as the organization. Chapter two is the literature review which retrospects the definition of toponymy, the naming theories and the previous researches on naming of American place names. Chapter three and chapter four are the main parts of the dissertation, involving the presentation of the new theoretical framework with two case studies, the review and discussion of the previous theories, the description of data analysis, the discussion of analytical results and also the cognitive mechanism behind those place names. Chapter five comes to a conclusion about the major findings, implications, limitations and suggestions.