The Cognitive Analysis Of Flexible Boundary In English And Chinese Classifier Structures

Classifier structure plays a very significant role in human language.The classifier has been existing to meet people's understanding and cognitive needs of the entire world since the Oracle period.And the amount of it has been expanding,along with the development of social and cultural life.The world language is divided into singular and plural marked type and classifier mark type,such as English,an Indo-European language and Chinese,a Sino-Tibetan language,but even in the singular and plural marked English,there is still a very rich classifier structure.The form of classifier structure in English is"a+N1+of+N2",and the form of classifier structure in Chinese is"???".It is obvious that the function of classifier is not limited to counting.Rich classifiers provide a broad space for linguistic expression,helping to visualize,materialize and quantify those abstract,complex,and relatively hardly to measure things and events.Therefore,the study of classifiers is too numerous,especially the emergence of cognitive linguistics has made a dramatic change in the study of classifiers,and the focus has been changed from description and classification to interpretation that is the cognitive mechanism behind it.Because the focus of previous research is only on the study of a single language,English or Chinese,they neglect the commonality of language cognition and lack of the persuasiveness of cognition.Based on the commonality and characteristics of classifier structures in two languages,this paper explores the boundary characteristics of classifiers from a cognitive perspective.Everything in the world is divided into bounded and unbounded according to the human being's perception of the world.Language is the outer shell of human mind,so it is also divided into bounded and unbounded.According to Gestalt psychology,people tend to understand and perceive things as a whole and with a boundary.The classifier structure build up a bridge for this psychological property,but it is not mono-directional but flexible.In order to seek the cognitive mechanism implied by the internal and external interactions of each part of classifier structure,we use metaphor and metonymy theory to analyze the boundary characteristics of English and Chinese classifier structures based on cognitive perspective.The results show that,on the one hand,the metonymy mechanism is the most basic cognitive relationship within the classifier structure.On the other hand,in the classifier structure,the use of the metaphor mechanism in the classifier structure promotes the diversification of the classifier structure and enhances its boundary flexibility.The analysis of the classifier structure and the analysis of its internal correlation are of great significance for human understanding of the language and understanding of the world.