A Tentative Study On The Construction Of Discrete-Continuous Semantic Representation Model For Number Category Of English Nominals

"Number",as a universal and grammatical category in language,is one of the most significant characteristics of English nominal expressions.In language,the number category is expressed as the number of referents(persons,things,phenomena),and grammatical forms are expected to be consistent with it in sentences.Quite a few linguists have devoted themselves to illustrating it from diverse perspectives.Nevertheless,although the research of the number category under the approach of grammar,context,boundedness,and number form-meaning profoundly substantiates the sophistication of its representation form,it lays stress on forms and underestimates cognitive mechanisms.Although the investigation on cognition and cognitive psychology dedicates itself to the relationship between language and reality,a large proportion of them fails to bring up a comprehensive discussion and even neglect the number category of abstract nominals.As a result,there is a lack of a systematic semantic representation model for the number category of English nominals.Hence,this paper engages itself in the number category of English nominals,tentatively serving to construct a discrete-continuous semantic representation model of the English noun number category,so as to present the approach of the cognition of the British on the number of entities.This paper,guided by the approach of literature research,induction,and introspection,tentatively grapples with the following four problems:(1)What is the significance of number category for the instance in the linguistic continuum?(2)What is the correspondence between the number of things and the number representation of nouns in language?(3)How to distinguish count nouns from mass nouns?(4)How to construct a continuum of representation for the number category of English nominals?Things in the physical world comprise objects and substances,which are represented by count nouns and mass nouns in English.In line with Talmy’s three major parameters for configuration structure,paradigmatic objects are bounded,discrete,and countable;prototypical substances are characterized by unboundedness,continuity as well as uncountability.However,prototype theory is fully convinced that the boundary of entities is vague.Substance and object,uniplex and multiplex,count nouns and mass nouns are qualified to be converted into each other.Indeed,the transition between bounded and unbounded runs through human production and practice,and those continua constitute the semantic representation model for the number category of English nominal expressions.Such a model is highly related to human cognition,viewing frame,visual distance,cognitive prominence,and specificity.The findings of the study are as follows:(1)There is a high correspondence between the number of things in the physical world and the number category of nouns in language.It is because the conversion between bounded and unbounded is universal in human production and practice that there are corresponding ever-changing representations of number categories in language;(2)Count nouns are distinct from mass nouns in the state of boundedness,plexity,internal composition,practicality,and relevance,as well as the state of dividedness.Those parameters play a central role in categorizing count nouns and mass nouns.(3)This paper establishes a semantic representation model for the English noun number category in accordance with the construal and prototype theory.The model is composed of the uniplex-multiplex continuum,the substance-object continuum as well as the reified substances-reified objects continuum,from concrete to abstract.In comparison to previous studies,first of all,the study adopts a new theoretical framework.Guided by Talmy’s Configuration Structure,it collaborates with Prototype Theory and Construal to illustrate the conversion of the English noun number category.Secondly,the thesis dedicates itself to constructing the discrete-continuous semantic representation model of the number category for English nominals,which shows the panorama of number category of English nominal expressions.The most significant advantage of the construction of DSRM is to visualize the intangible number category conceptual structure of English Nominal expressions,which can greatly facilitate language learners’ processing of the countability of nouns.Finally,the research sheds light on English learners in that they can clarify the relationship between reality,cognition,and language,and comprehend the representation forms of language in line with life experience by means of discrete-continuous cognitive mechanisms.