Semantic Motivation Of Chinese And English Compound Word From Perspective Of Basic Level Category

Compound words are a kind of vocabulary which is widely used and easy to learn with its various forms and explicit meaning. To understand its motivation and meaning composition rule is not only conducive to China’s English teaching and the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language, but also beneficial to the further understanding of the process of human cognition.There are a variety of definitions on compound words, among which the widely recognized view is that "the compound word is composed of two or more words or roots (stems) through the method of compounding". Compound words can be defined from three aspects of pronunciation, semantics and grammar. According to the part of speech, compound words can be divided into compound nouns, compound adjectives, compound verbs and so on. There have been a lot of researches on compound words at home and abroad, and they have gradually shifted from the traditional structure analysis to the studies from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. In recent years, there are many comparative studies of Chinese and English compound words in China, and there is a trend to combine them with the relevant theories of cognitive linguistics, but most studies just mentioned compound nouns that are composed of two nouns.Taking the compound nouns, compound adjectives and compound verbs which are composed of two words or roots as the research object, through a new viewpoint of cognitive linguistics-basic level categories, this thesis attempts to unscramble the motivation and meaning construction of Chinese and English compound words. Our viewpoint is that:basic level categories play the role of basic classification, and after a basic level category and its language expression form (the basic level term) are determined, the members of the basic level category can be expressed as "the member’s unique feature+the basic level category". This form of expression should be both economical and accurate, which is the main reason for the production of compound words; in a compound word’s expression form, the basic level term, which is also a basic root, denotes the basic level category, and another basic root signifies the feature of the category’s member. The part of speech and the basic meaning of such compound words are both determined by the word that indicates the basic level category. Therefore, the thesis makes a comparative analysis of Chinese and English compound words in terms of structure, and finds that the part of speech and the basic meaning of a compound word are determined by that of the basic level term, which plays a leading role in the meaning formation; and as to those compound words with more than one part of speech, sometimes it involves other cognitive mechanisms such as metaphor and metonymy in the meaning formation, sometimes the basic level term changes its meaning through conversion, and they are both the reasons for the change in the part of speech. Regardless of part of speech and structural difference, the meaning formation of compound words is basically in line with the argument that we have put forward:on the basis of basic level categories. Specifically speaking, in the two words consisting of a compound word, there is a basic level term which shows the generality of the category, while the other word is mainly used to modify the specific member of the category, showing the particularity of the member. The combination of the two words creates a new word, and the "new" is reflected from the "particularity" of the word’s semantic category. Therefore, this kind of compound words expresses the specific members of the basic level category, and semantically belongs to subordinate terms.This research tests and verifies the hypothesis that compound words’meaning construction is based on basic level categories, and confirms and strengthens the explanatory power of basic level categories, which is also an innovation. The research also broadens the approaches and thinking paths for researches on compound words and perfects the previous studies, which helps to promote vocabulary innovation and development and provide a more efficient way for language learning, especially for vocabulary learning.