A Study Of The Semantic Features Of The English Nouns With Er-typed Suffixes On The Basis Of Thematic Roles

There are a large number of nominal derivatives in English ending with the suffix-er or its variant-or etc.The most outstanding meaning of this kind of derivatives often indicates a person who carries out a certain action.This prevailing meaning is quite liable to make a false impression on English learners in China that words with the suffix-er always denote persons.To some extent,this kind of misunderstanding has represented the traditional method of understanding er-typed derivatives in English teaching in China.Its defect lies in the mere attention paid to the simple combination of the literal meaning of the root verb and the most typical meaning of the suffix-er,the result being one-sidedness in the understanding of word meaning.In fact,English er-typed derivatives are in most cases polysemous words whose meanings are encoded with great regularity,which can be observed and described by the use of thematic roles.Specifically,such kind of observation and description can be realized with the assistance of the semantic relationships between the root verb and the noun phrases activated in the semantic structure of the root verb.Such relationships are labeled as thematic roles,including agent,patient,instrument,location,theme and many others.The research first finds out 400 most frequently used er-typed derivatives that meet the research requirements by searching for the target words in Corpus of Contemporary American English with the help of the regular expression *er.[n*],deleting the ineligible results.Then the research,from the perspective of thematic roles,makes a careful observation of the meaning of all the target words by labeling each sense of such words with a proper thematic role.Lastly,the WORD processor is used to perform an automatic statistics,with the major discussion devoted to the exploration of the semantic features of target words.It is found that the semantic orientations of er-typed nouns in English are most closely associated with agent in the semantic structure activated by the root verb,followed by patient and instrument.This implies that in the course of the lexicalization of relevant concepts,humankind tends to view the world in a self-centered way,to the negligence of other entities in some degree.In addition,the semantic features of the suffix-er depends greatly on the corresponding root verb,and can be summarized aspolysemy when no argument activated by the root verb occurs in word-formation,monosemy when one argument activated by the root verb occurs in word-formation,and semantic addition in some other cases.On the basis of the findings above,the dissertation has summarized three principles for constraining the meaning of er-typed nouns,i.e.,the principle of agent priority,the principle of referential focalization,and the principle of semantic saturation.The principle of agent priority means that the meaning of er-typed nouns is firstly or just correlated to the agent that root verb activates.For example,cutter can be correlated to agent to indicate someone who cuts something,while it is also connected with instrument to indicate a tool for cutting.However,the word,batterer,is just correlated to agent to refer to a person who batters someone,without any association with instrument.The principle of referential focalization suggests that the meaning of er-typed derivatives is not always as broad as they look,while in many cases there are some detailed constraints on the semantic roles activated by the root verb.Offerer,for instance,generally does not indicate a person who offers something to other people,but is used restrictively in economics to mean someone who presents something,especially price,to the other party for acceptance or rejection.The principle of semantic saturation indicates that the meaning of er-typed nouns is not related,in a simple way,to the agent or other semantic roles that a root verb activates.More often than not,some additional meanings are added to make the derivative semantically more saturated,thereby meeting the practical requirements for communication.For example,doer does not always indicate a person who does something,but is usually used to mean someone who does jobs promptly and efficiently,without spending much time thinking about them.This research is an extension of the previous studies that explore the semantic features of the English deverbal nouns on the basis of thematic roles.Throughout the whole research,great importance is attached to the observation and description of linguistic facts on the one hand,and the summarization of corresponding linguistic laws on the other hand.It is hoped that the research might contribute to the improvement of English learning in China.