A Research On The Construction Of Schematic Representation Semantic Network For English Agentive Suffixes

In English,derivation method,compound method,and conversion method are major methods to acquire new words.The approach of prefixing or suffixing a bound morpheme to constitute a new word is referred to as derivation method.Compared with original words,the new words either receive semantic changes or acquire shifts in part of speech.Derivation method comprise prefixation and suffixation.Prefixes principally adjust the semantics of the roots on affirmation and negation semantic poles.In general,the part of speech of the original root is not modified.Suffixes are generally appended after the roots and adjust the semantics and part of speech in the meantime to satisfy human needs of expressing dynamic and static affairs or relationships.Agents are grammatical subjects of actions,in other words,the people or objects that perform actions or make variations.Agentive suffixes refer to the suffixes which endow the new words agentive functions.In terms of the semantics of the new words,agentive suffixes were divided into six categories in the thesis,which comprise: agentive suffixes standing for the concept of “ordinary actor”;agentive suffixes expressing the concept of “professional actor”;agentive suffixes signifying the concept of “nationality and identity”;agentive suffixes labeling the concept of “profiling both agents and patients”;agentive suffixes indicating the concept of “female agents”;agentive suffixes denoting the concept of “evaluation of agents”.Agentive suffixes play a crucial role in representing semantics of words.The classifications of agentive suffixes are conductive to distinguishing meanings of English nouns which denoting “person”.Previous researches have rarely focused on the agentivity of suffixes,and the analyses are merely on high-frequency used agentive suffixes,for instance,the suffix-er and-ist.This thesis comparatively comprehensively construes thirty five English common agentive suffixes in sequence.The paper intends is to provide learners with a clear network when researching English agentive suffixes as well as to render a reference for scholars in subsequent researches.The number of English words is immense,long and intricate words are in the majority.However,the complicated words are frequently formed by prefixing andsuffixing simple words.Complying with the principles of derivation may develop the abilities of English learners to guess meanings of words according to affixes and to quickly memorize new words as well.Meanwhile,the method makes contributions to enrich the vocabulary as well as to improve reading ability and efficiency in a short term.Moreover,English teachers may draw some inspirations in the teaching methods.This paper studies English agentive nominal suffixes.From the perspective of conceptual integration,basing on domain,category,and construal theory,the thesis analyzed the semantics and pragmatics of English agentive suffixes and constructed schematic representation semantic network for English agentive suffixes.According to the research,there are the following findings:Firstly,the research finds out that the semantics represented by English agentive suffixes are mainly drifting between “agent” and “the object which has the same function as agent”,and this provides conditions for the polysemic derivation of agentive suffixes.Secondly,agents of diverse categories generally correspond different cognitive domains to profile the mapping process of executors as well as executive objects,ideas and phenomena.Thirdly,agentive suffixes are capable of classifying people,objects or ideas which possess agentive attributes efficiently.Fourthly,the study indicates that the representations driven by human,objects,and thoughts are motivations of the derivatives of English agentive suffixes.Fifthly,English agentive suffixes have experienced the evolution from the category of active agents to passive patients.In the meantime,agentive suffixes are the most effective and the simplest linguistic means for denoting causality in English language.Sixthly,on the basis of the framed semantic network of each agentive suffix,a semantic representation continuum of entire thirty five agentive suffixes is created,for the sake of language learners could have integral comprehension of the distributions in the network of agentive suffixes and providing certain reference value for the research of affixes of other categories in the meantime.