| This dissertation, consisting of a descriptive study, an experimental study, and pedagogical implications, focuses on the semantic structures of Chinese classifiers. The descriptive study begins by reporting research on the etymological origins of Chinese classifiers and demonstrating that Chinese classifiers are modeled on Chinese people's understanding of the physical and social world, including their personal human embodiment, natural and constructed surroundings, and social environment. An analysis of the semantic structures of selected body-part-based classifiers is presented based on corpus data. Analysis reveals that all classifiers have traceable motivations and can be reasonably accounted for by various cognitive mechanisms, such as image schema transformation, metaphorical or metonymic extension, functional association, etc.;The experimental study tests whether Chinese classifier categories have cognitive impacts on people's thought processes. It is hypothesized that if classifier effects do exist, Chinese speakers should behave differently from English speakers in terms of reaction time in pictorial triadic similarity tests. Three tasks were designed and tested on three subject groups: Chinese native speakers, English native speakers with no Chinese language background, and English native speakers with Chinese proficiency at intermediate or above. The results indicate that the Chinese classifier system does not have a direct impact on conceptual structure, particularly when other general cognitive bases are available during our engagement in classification activities. However, language effects can be activated and exert a certain influence on cognition when linguistic conditions are furnished. This conclusion could be interpreted as support for the weaker version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. However, it does not support the stronger claim that language determines cognition.;In the pedagogical implications section, an argument is advanced favoring presentation of the conceptual structure of classifier categories in teaching Chinese as a second or foreign language. It is suggested that the introduction of a classifier in second language classrooms follow three steps: (a) reveal the central sense, the etymological meaning, of the classifier; (b) introduce each of the polysemic senses with a comprehensive list of nouns classified by the classifier; and (c) disclose the motivations behind the classifier category. |
