A Study Of Cognitive Mechanism Of Meaning Construction Of English Noun Compounds

Compounding is a prevalent way to form English words,and noun compounds are the most substantial proportion of all compounds.Concentrating on the phonological,orthographic,semantic and grammatical perspectives,previous studies lack a detailed description of the relationship between internal semantic relations and the cognitive mechanism of meaning construction of English noun compounds.By combining Conceptual Integration Theory(CIT)with Construction Coercion Theory(CCT),this thesis generates a new cognitive model,Conceptual Construction Integration Theory(CCIT).From the perspective of meaning relations of components of a compound,noun compounds in English can be divided into endocentric and exocentric.noun compounds The present thesis,based on CCIT,analyzes these two types respectively.It concentrates not only on the internal semantic relations,but also the cognitive mechanism of dynamic meaning construction of English noun compounds.This study has answered the following two questions.How do these words reconcile the different meanings to a compound which are made of two or more very different words?What are the similarities and differences between endocentric and exocentric English noun compounds in the process of meaning construction?The findings of this thesis are as follows.The meaning construction of English noun compounds goes through a process of integration,and the coercion plays an important role in reconciling meaning conflicts of components of English noun compounds.The only difference is that,for endocentric English noun compounds,coercion happens between the full endocentric English noun compound and the central component of endocentric noun compounds;whereas for exocentric noun compounds coercion happens between the individual components.The new model CCIT,generated by combining CIT with CCT,not only contributes to illustrating the meaning construction process of English noun compounds,but also contributes to illustrating the meaning construction process of English compounds,English phrases and idioms.This study is practically helpful for English words acquisition and English words teaching.