A Cognitive Study Of Chinese Basic Color Combined Words In Cyber Context

In recent years,a lot of Chinese basic color combined words have appeared on the Internet,such as APEC lan(APEC?),wang hong(??),and hei hua(??).Basic color words and Chinese combined words are classical topics of linguistics,while,with the rapid development of society and Internet technology,cyber context becomes an important background of word formation and meaning construction.Therefore,Chinese basic color combined words in cyber context have attracted the attention of many scholars in China.However,previous studies of Chinese basic color combined words in cyber context have two main limitations:first,they focus on the description of the origins,word formation and characteristics of several net words containing basic colors from social,cultural or linguistic perspectives,thus lacking the cognitive interpretation of motivations and mechanisms of the meaning construction of those words;second,previous studies have mostly probed into basic color words,Chinese combined words or net words respectively,but few of them have fairly systematically focused on Chinese basic color combined words in cyber context as a specific object of study.This thesis aims to study Chinese basic color combined words in cyber context from a cognitive perspective.It employs ConceptualMetaphor Theory,Conceptual Metonymy Theory and Conceptual Blending Theory in cognitive linguistics,mainly adopting a qualitative method,probing into the cognitive motivations of Chinese basic color combined words in cyber context and presenting the cognitive mechanisms of them,attempting to enrich the study of basic color words and Chinese combined words,especially those originating from cyber world.It has answered the following three questions:(1)What is the classification of Chinese basic color combined words in cyber context,and what are their main features?(2)What are the cognitive motivations of Chinese basic color combined words in cyber context?(3)What are the cognitive mechanisms of Chinese basic color combined words in cyber context?The findings of the study are as follows:(1)Chinese basic color combined words in cyber context can fall into three categories:compounding,derivation and abbreviation.They have three features:novelty in meaning,economy in form and productivity in form and meaning;(2)The cognitive motivations of Chinese basic color combined words in cyber context are social motivations,cultural motivations and psychological motivations.(3)There are mainly three cognitive mechanisms of Chinese basic color combined words in cyber context:mechanism of conceptual metaphor including cross-domain mappings;mechanism of conceptual metonymy including domain highlighting,analogy and inference;mechanism of conceptual blending including blending network,analogy and inference.The study is of some important theoretical and practical significance:(1)It has proved that cognitive approaches including Conceptual Metaphor Theory,Conceptual Metonymy Theory and Conceptual Blending Theory have great explanatory power in interpreting linguistic phenomena,even newly coined words including Chinese basic color combined words in cyber context;(2)It may give some help to linguistic learners of Chinese whose mother tongue is not Chinese,as well as Chinese teachers and translators;(3)It may help netizens understand and utter those expressions better,and thus facilitate the further development of expressions in contemporary Chinese.(4)It may enhance the researches on Chinese net words,basic color words and basic color combined words,which could provide some hints for tapping into the regularities of the development of Chinese in cyber context;(5)It may enrich the cyber culture and indicate the power of the Internet in creating or combining new words.