A Study On The Grammaticalization Of "O" From The Perspective Of Cognitive Linguistics

In modern Chinese,modal particles play a significant role in daily conversations.Nevertheless,it is due to their vague meanings and flexible structures that few scholars have conducted comprehensive and systematic researches on them.For the past ten years,some scholars have become interested in the newly-emerging modal particles like “O(?)”,which is widely and flexibly used.By referring to CCL and some reputable Chinese dictionaries,the author classifies “O” into verb “O”,interjection “O” and modal particle “O”,whose semantic meanings,pragmatic meanings and constructions are analyzed and explored respectively.It is found that the interjection “O” originates from the verb “O” and is gradually grammaticalized to the modal particle “O”.Its process of grammaticalization features persistence and unidirectionality.Besides,the grammaticalization of “O” is investigated on the ground of conceptual metaphor and subjectification.Conceptual metaphor,one of the most important cognitive mechanisms in grammaticalization,denotes a systemic mapping from a concrete domain to an abstract one.The concept is the content of representation and the metaphor is the mechanism of representation.Subjectification,another vital cognitive mechanism,means that conceptualizers are inclined to construe a scene transferring from an objective axis to a subjective one.In light of this,the grammaticalization of “O” is divided into two processes.One is from verb “O” to interjection “O”,and the other is from interjection “O” to modal particle “O”.In the first process,conceptual metaphor matters a lot,for it activates a mapping from space domain to emotion domain,under which the process is completed.Moreover,when construing “O”,the conceptualizer's view is converted from objectivity to subjectivity.In the second process,the conceptual metaphor and subjectification both fail to offer satisfactory explanations.However,it is noticed that analogy comes into play in the process under close investigation.There are many other interjections like “A(?)” and “Ba(?)”,which can also be used as modal particles,offering references to the grammaticalization of the second process.This thesis probes into the grammaticalization of “O” in cognitive and pragmatic ways since the studies on cognition and language use are usually closely related.To sum up,the grammaticalization of “O” abides by human's cognitive models and the study provides a valuable reference in quest for cognitive motivations behind language.