An Embodied Cognitive Account Of The English Collective Classifier Construction

The English Collective Classifier Construction（hereafter CCC）is a nominal structure that describes a collection of entities and expresses the overall meaning.Widely used in English language,it is generally shown in the form of a（n）/number+N₁+of+N₂,such as a flock of birds,a heap of trouble,a pile of paper and so on.In this construction,bearing the[+collective]feature,N₁ belongs to the noun category,mainly modifying a group of things,thus named collective classifier.With respect to N₂,realized by English plural count nouns,mass nouns,or abstract nouns,it chiefly refers to a collection that collocates with the collective classifier,so it is the collocated noun.Since the construction appears,it has attracted a good deal of domestic and foreign scholars to study and analyze it from multiple perspectives and all of them have made a degree of contributions in specific aspects.Nevertheless,in review of previous related researches,it is found that most scholars put their focus on the classification,pragmatic function and formal features of classifiers.More than that,their discussions of English CCC do not touch on the cognitive processing and the interactive embodiment.Over the years,with embodied cognition becoming an emerging view during the development of cognitive linguistics,it has provided much new ideas and paradigms for many unsolved linguistic problems.Embodied cognition stresses the importance of embodiment,maintaining that all linguistic phenomena are the consequences of cognitive processing and embodied interaction.As one special linguistic construction,the English CCC is no exception.Therefore,the thesis attempts to explicate the constructional mechanism through the exploration of cognitive processing and embodied bases of the English CCC systematically with the guidance of embodied cognition.The qualitative method including description and explanation is adopted as the methodology on the basis of the data that is mainly collected in Corpus of Contemporary American English.At first,the semantic and syntactic features as well as the classification of the English CCC are described.Then,embodied cognition including cognitive mechanisms and embodied basis is the theoretical support.The cognitive mechanisms as bounding mechanism,categorization and conceptual metaphor are used to explain the form construction of the English CCC in terms of the boundedness conversion,multiple collocations and headed direction.After that,the embodied bases are explored in the English CCC to reveal the conceptualization of it with respect to the concept generation,categories classifying and mapping relation.The study draws the following three conclusions:Firstly,the English CCC possesses its specific features and classification that separate it from other classifier constructions.The semantic features are shown as mandatory boundedness,strong integrality and high quantitative vagueness.The syntactic features are reflected as multiple co-occurrences and high flotation of head.And the classification is presented as conventional CCC and non-conventional CCC on the basis of different collocations.Secondly,formal features of the English CCC are generated by cognitive processing.Bounding mechanism expounds the boundarization process in the English CCC,in which the unbounded nouns are offered boundary in predicative domain,being enabled to enter the English CCC as a bounded expression with specific referent;categorization and recategorization are processed inside N₂ respectively on the basis of N₁’s prototypical collocated noun since N₁ marks N₂ category,realizing the multiple collocations with members in N2 category;three types of metaphorical mapping modes are activated in the English CCC internally,which are the entrenched metaphorical mapping,primary metaphorical mapping and compound metaphorical mapping.Within the three mapping modes,N₁ describes different internal attributes of N₂,showing N₂’s center status in the English CCC.Thirdly,conceptualization process of the English CCC is revealed through embodied bases.It includes the concept generation of the integrality and vague quantity,classifying of conventional and non-conventional categories,and the quantifying of abstract concepts in the English CCC.The thesis explores the embodied cognition of the English CCC with the consideration of both cognitive processing and embodied bases.It helps to clarify the constructional mechanism of the English CCC,and makes up for the deficiencies of previous studies effectively to some extent.In addition,some limitations are pointed out and some implications are proposed in the last chapter for contributing to the future research.