The Meaning Construction Of English And Chinese Adjective-Noun Combinations

As we all know,AN combination as an effective way to expand vocabulary plays an important role in the daily communication.Many scholars at home and abroad have done some researches on the AN combinations,such as Shen Jiaxuan(1977),Lv Shuxiang(2014),Warren(1984),Kamp&Partee(1995),etc,but most of the previous studies focus on the syntactic relationship between adjectives and nouns,and the semantic relations of the AN combinations.With the development of cognitive science,some linguists have begun to explain the meaning construction of AN combinations from the cognitive perspective.However,they lack a complete,systematic and general theoretical framework.This paper combines the Conceptual Integration Theory with the Qualia Structure Theory and Zeno Wendler's theory of adjectives to construct the semantic construction framework,with English and Chinese AN combinations as the research objects so as to verify the strength of the model in the interpretation of meaning construction and find out the similarities between English and Chinese AN combinations in the meaning construction process.Specifically speaking,this thesis uses Fauconnier's Conceptual Integration Theory as the basic theoretical framework and with Pustejovesky's Qualia Structure Theory and Zeno Wendler's theory of adjectives as supplements,trying to build a more specific and operational meaning construction model.The conceptual integration theory includes four mental spaces:two input spaces,generic space,and blended space,which makes the abstract process concrete and provides timely online processing for the meaning construction.Qualia structure theory includes four qualia roles:constitutive,formal,telic and agentive roles,which are embedded in the conceptual integration model to give the abstract background knowledge to the conceptual content of nouns and provide specific operational means for the precise description of semantic meanings of nouns.Based on Zeno Wendler's classification of adjectives,the study of adjectives is no longer confined to the syntactic relations,but focuses on the conceptual content of adjectives.Therefore,the adjectives are divided into four categories:natural attribute,measurement,dynamic,and valuative adjectives,which provides a theoretical basis for the concept features of adjectives.In terms of the research object,in modern Chinese,the monosyllabic adjectives with semantic constancy and continuity,is a typical member of the attributes,which has the similar semantic features with the English attributive words when they modify nouns.As a result,the Chinese monosyllabic adjectives and English attributive adjectives and nouns will be considered as the object of this study.Based on the newly formed model,this thesis classifies the AN combinations into two categories according to the fact whether metaphor and/or metonymy get involved in the meaning construction process,that is(1)non-metaphor and/or non-metonymy AN combinations;(2)metaphor and/or metonymy AN combinations.Furthermore,this thesis classifies the second type AN combinations into three categories according to the fact whether the adjectives or the nouns or the AN combinations as a whole get involved metaphor and/or metonymy.That is a)metaphor and/or metonymy-based adjectives,non-metaphor and non-metonymy-based nouns;b)metaphor and/or metonymy-based nouns,non-metaphor-and non-metonymy-based adjectives;c)the AN combination as a whole metaphorical and/or metonymic.At last,on the basis of the newly formed model,this thesis makes a detailed analysis of the three types of AN combinations and tries to interpret the process of meaning construction.This thesis finds out that:(1)as for the non-metaphor and/or non-metonymy AN combinations,the similar concept characteristics of adjectives and nouns promote the conceptual integration;(2)as for the metaphor and/or metonymy-based adjectives,non-metaphor and non-metonymy-based nouns,the similar concept characteristics between metaphorical and/or metonymized adjectives and nouns inspire the conceptual integration;(3)as for the metaphor and/or metonymy-based nouns,non-metaphor-and non-metonymy-based adjectives,the similar concept characteristics between metaphorical and/or metonymic nouns and adjectives promote the conceptual integration;(4)as for the AN combination as a whole metaphorical and/or metonymic,the similar concept characteristics of adjectives and nouns form the basic meaning,while the metaphorical and/or metonymic AN combinations form the extension meaning.This thesis focuses on the cognitive study of AN combinations,and interprets the the meaning construction process of AN combinations.However,there are still some inadequacies in the present study.First of all,this paper selects Chinese monosyllabic adjectives and English attributive adjectives and nouns as the research objects,whether the modified model is applicable to the other kinds of AN combinations needs further study.What's more,in the process of analyzing AN combinations,people's subjectivity is strong and there is lack of psychological reality.Through the corpus and experimental methods can help to overcome the deficiencies,so there are still much work to be done for further research.