A Research Of The Mechanism Of Cognitive Construal In The Semantic Scope Of English Negative Markers

Taking cognitive semantics as the theoretical base,the thesis lays the research focus on cognitive construal of semantic frame of negative markers.By applying the cognitive construal theory into the decoding of interactive context,the thesis further explores the dynamic cognitive mechanism how people conceptualizes the objective world through language,and more importantly how the meaning is generated in the frame of concept.More specifically,this thesis deepens the discussion of negative scope of negator respectively based on the theory of cognitive construal theory,concept metaphor and prototype category,hence revealing the mechanism how the negative force of negator projects into our concept so that the cognitive frame of negative scope can be outlined.When achieving the primary goal of the research,this thesis gets the following findings:(1)Based on the relevant thoughts of the embodied philosophy,this thesis further confirms that in the conceptual field,the existence of the opposition between the spatial substantial form and the non-material spatial form generates the prototype of negation;(2)Negation is the semantic process in which the cognitive subject projects the negation prototype to the part or the whole of the event framework through the cognitive mechanism of metaphor;(3)The semantic"ambiguity"is created in the construing process of negative meaning,it is the constructed"gap"between the two semantic interfaces of discourse rotation so that the discourse in turn can run smoothly;(4)The negative semantic construal mechanism in the event frame is also a metacognitive verification process in essence.More specifically,as far as human modality sensibility concerns about,the sense of deprivation of experience brought to the subject by the vacuum filling state of material in space is the negation of the real filling state of material substance,and it is this sense of deprivation that strengthens the negative experience structure of human beings.In the conceptual world of human beings,the negative concept is the result of the cognitive unconscious processing of the physical material and immaterial spatial opposites by the cognitive subject.In the linear structure of language,the negative morpheme is the symbolic representation of such a state of opposition.Secondly,in the process of the innate and acquired energy interaction between the cognitive subject and the object,the negative original image schema and its prototype structure are gradually constructed by the cognitive subject,stored in the cognitive system of the subject in the form of image schema and conceptual structure,and finally the negative prototype is formed.Human language competence can compress and encode the multi-dimensional elements of the event framework,such as schemata,matrix,momentum,path,cause and mode,into the linear structure system of language.At the same time,as universal human prototype category,the cognitive process of the categorization of negation can be projected by the cognitive mechanism of conceptual metaphor onto different ingredients of cognitive events which relate to the object(the accuse or patient),behavior or method,the motion of the framework conditions(time,place,time,and even the whole event framework)so that the framework of cognitive structure element or event as a whole is negated.Under the evocative effect of negative markers,the subject negates the whole or part of a frame event through the projection mechanism of cognitive metaphor,thus realizing the cognitive construal of negative semantics.Therefore,negation is the semantic process in which the cognitive subject projects the negation prototype to the part or the whole of the event framework through the cognitive mechanism of metaphor.From the perspective of pragmatics,the nature of negation is that the cognitive subject verifies the semantic truth value.of the part or the whole of the conceptual framework.If it does not conform to the prior conceptual framework in the subjective empirical world,the semantic construal is negative.The semantic truth value of virtual filling space of immaterial entity is the referential truth value or logical truth value of virtual filling space of immaterial entity.Thirdly,meaning is generated by the construal of the concept of subject in the language system.Construal theory concerns the way in which cognitive subjects conceptualize a particular event or situation.Event framework has its character of multi-dimensions,when representing in the language,they will be compiled processing into the linear syntax sequence,which to a certain extent regulates the conceptualization of multidimensional material world,in the decoding process of negative meaning,semantic"ambiguity"is created,and a"gap" is constructed between the two semantic interfaces of discourse rotation,so that the speech in turn can run smoothly.Finally,Construal is similar to the metacognitive role in cognitive psychology.It monitors the decoding process of the e'vent frame meaning in the concept activated by language markers,and finally establishes the projection scope and focus anchor of negative meaning.The cognitive construal of the subject concerns to the conceptual framework extracted from body experience and the synchronic static image schema,and dynamically interprets the negative scope and focus on the event framework through the formal representation of the language symbol system.Therefore,the negative interpretation process in the event framework can also be regarded as a negative semantic inspection and metacognitive monitoring mechanism.Negation has its complete prototype category and semantic power,which are dynamically stored in the conceptual structure of the subject.The demarcation of negation scope and the anchoring of negation focus mainly depend on the metacognitive monitoring activities of cognitive construal.The mechanism of cognitive construal of negative semantics is not to construct a new conceptual framework or program,but to realize the construal of negative semantics relying on the structure of other event frameworks.The above four points are the contribution or discovery of the qualitative research on the scope of negation marker in this thesis,hoping to contribute to the further exploration of negation category and its mechanism of cognitive construal.Limited by the interlanguage barriers of the collected corpus,this thesis may be not quite sufficient in the inter-language exhaustiveness of corpus collection,which greatly affects the value of this paper in the universal explanatory power of the theory.Confronting with the dynamic complexity of the negative category,the cognitive explanation mechanism of the negative scope and the anchoring of its focus explored in this study cannot fully meet its needs for the adequacy of theoretical explanation.Therefore,in order to make the construal mechanism of negation domain more objective and scientific,more scientific experiments are needed to carry out,especially the experimental evidence from angle diachronic,cross-linguistic and neurolinguistics.