A Study Of Semantic Default And Its Accommodation Based On EMR Model

“Default”,originating from computer science,is now widely applied to the field of linguistic study.According to the current literature found in linguistic journals,thesis,and books,researches on semantic defaults have become a hot topic in cognitive linguistics.Since the introduction to“Default Semantics”advocated by K.M.Jaszczolt,most scholars at home and abroad have duly focused on semantic default phenomena in communications,but few have touched upon dialogical accommodations in TV series and the cognitive working mechanism behind them.In order to fill these gaps,this thesis tries to integrate“Event-domain Cognitive Model”and“Compositional Merger Representation”into an“Event-domain Merger Representation Model(called‘EMR'for short)”on the basis of their merits,drawbacks,similarities and differences.This newly combined model is beneficial to revealing cognitive working processes of semantic defaults and their corresponding accommodation methods.On the occasion of the 40~thh anniversary of Reform and Opening-up,Legend of Entrepreneurship and its sequels,as the anniversary TV series,reflect the real life of contemporary Chinese and their interpersonal activities in the new era.Therefore,characters'dialogues are mainly selected from Legend of Entrepreneurship and Two Families from Wenzhou and transcribed as a research data in which those containing semantic defaults are grouped into two categories and analyzed under the framework of EMR.It is discovered that semantic defaults surfaced in characters'dialogues are mainly manifested with linguistic representations and cultural perspectives.The application of EMR can clearly illustrate how a hearer interprets and accommodates speakers'utterances in line with conventionality,context,social-cultural inference and so on.Therefore,EMR model has a basic explanatory power for interpreting cognitive defaults and their accommodations.It also provides a new research direction for Default Semantics.