A Cognitive Study On The Order Of Premodifiers In English Noun Phrases

In English noun phrases,it is a common linguistic phenomenon that people use multiple premodifiers to modify the head noun,which makes the noun phrases particularly complex.For English learners,it is also difficult to arrange the order of each modifier,which undoubtedly increases their learning difficulties.Thus,the question how to arrange the modifiers correctly has attracted the attention of many linguists and scholars.Many linguists have studied the word order of premodifiers in English noun phrases based on iconicity theory,but most of their researches use the principle of distance iconicity to reveal the cognitive rules behind the word order at the syntactic level,while the definition and description of their concepts are neglected.In addition,the principle of iconicity of order is also applied to the study of English sentence structures.There is not systematic explanation on the word order of the premodifiers in noun phrases,which leaves some room for the study in this thesis.Cognitive domain is an important concept in cognitive grammar.It mainly describes the semantics of words and reflects the semantic structure relationship between modifiers and the head noun.The principle of iconicity of order emphasizes that the order of linguistic structures reflects the order in which people perceive the world,which follows a general cognitive schema or process.Therefore,this thesis supplements the concept of cognitive domain and the cognitive process of human beings to iconicity theory,and continues to explore the cognitive reasons behind the word order of premodifiers in English phrases noun from a cognitive perspective.By means of classifying the collected data and based on Carl Bache's model in relation to the classification of nominal premodifiers,the thesis primarily divides the premodifiers into four types: determinative modifiers,adjective modifiers,modifierswith adjective function and mixed modifiers.In this thesis,the order of these four kinds of modifiers and their constituents is studied.The research results show that the distance between modifiers of each type and the head noun is closely associated with their concepts constructed in the cognitive domains they belong to.Determinative modifiers are put at the left most of a noun phrase because the concepts in their cognitive domains are conceptually farthest away from the head noun.Adjective modifiers mainly describe the head noun subjectively and objectively,their concepts constructed in color domain,size domain as well as emotional domain are nearer to the head noun and then they are put closer to the head noun than determinative modifiers.Modifiers with adjective function mainly modify the head noun in a noun phrase from the aspects of material domain and category domain,these modifiers reflect the most essential attributes of the head noun,so they are placed the closest to the head noun.The mixed modifiers are essentially a summary of the first three types of modifiers,except determinative modifiers,the order of other modifiers depends on the attributes of modifiers in their subjective and objective cognitive domains,namely,the more objective the modifiers are in cognitive domains,the closer they are to the essential attributes of the head noun and thus the nearest they are put to the head noun.Iconicity of order is understood based on people's cognition.The order of premodifiers in English noun phrases is consistent with people's cognitive process of an object.Premodifiers follow the process of people's understanding of the world and reflect the essence of iconicity of order.Hence,they are inevitably governed by this principle.The object of the thesis is to help English learners know and understand the order of premodifiers in English noun phrases so that they can have a clear concept of the language phenomenon after they comprehend the cognitive reasons.At the same time,it aims to enrich the theoretical framework of the research on the order of premodifiers from the perspective of cognitive linguistics to a certain extent.