The Study On "N+V" Disyllabic Nouns

This paper aims to analyze "NV" nouns in Modern Chinese in terms of their semantic and syntactic behaviors.A diachronic study has also been conducted to reflect the historical development of these verbs.343 "NV" nouns have been selected from the "Modern Chinese Dictionary"(seventh edition)as the research objects.First,the grammatical relations between "N" and "V" and the semantics of "NV" nouns have been analyzed in this chapter.It is found that the structural relations can be divided into two categories: Modifier-modified and Subject-predicate.It is observed that the semantic types of Nms are restricted by the grammatical relations.Thus,the sematics of Nms in Modifier-modified and Subject-predicate structures are quite different: the former one can be divided into 9 subtypes wihle the later one can be divided into 2 subtypes.On the other hand,the semantics of Vms are not effected by the grammatical relations.Thus,it can be further divided into three subcategories: biological movement,social activity,and movement change.The semantic evolution process from morpheme to lexicon can be divided into two stages: two morphemes combine or fuse into one verb;the verb change into a noun through cognitive mechanisms.Secondly,the cognitive mechanisms and semantic interpretation paths of "NV" nouns have been explored in this chapter.Four cognitive mechanisms have been found: metonymy;metaphor;schema;conceptual integration.Metonymy mechanism is considered as the most common mechanism of "NV" nouns,which mainly happens inside the action ICM.The semantic interpretation paths of "NV" nouns can be divided into four types: metaphor after combination;metaphor after combination;metaphor after combination + metonymy;continuous metonymy / metaphor.Finally,the category-shifting process of "NV" disyllabic nouns have been extensively studied from the perspective of both dynamic and static features.It is found that dynamic features include three aspects: lexicalization;grammatical morphological changes;semantic changes.The lexicalization process of these nouns is represented by the development from "separated words" to "(verbal phrases)" to "nouns";grammatical changes are manifested by the phenomenon of retroflex suffixation;semantic changes are represented by [+ reference] [+ quantity ] Acquisition of semantic features and loss of [+ statement] semantic features.The static features are characteristic of the noun category,and are prominently manifested in the combination function and syntactic function.