The Semantic Interpretation On Generating Mechanisms For Script-Opposition In Verbal Humor Based On The Semantic Category

Verbal humor refers to the humorous effect generated by people through language in the process of communication.Since language is an important tool for people to exchange information,verbal humor has naturally become the focus of linguistic research.The linguistic study of verbal humor began with the Semantic Script Theory of Verbal Humor.Later,the General Theory of Verbal Humor proposed six parameters to compare the similarity of verbal humor.The study of verbal humor,based on the Semantic Script Theory of Verbal Humor,points out that the core of verbal humor is script opposition,which is carried out from the perspective of semantics.The syntactic relationship between two opposing scripts in verbal humor has not yet been thoroughly studied.Based on the Semantic Script Theory and semantic category,this study takes the projection mechanism in Chomskyan Government and Binding Theory and the merge mechanism in the Minimalist Program as the operation mechanisms to formally represent and analyze the mechanism for generating the script-opposition,and then reveals the syntactic relationship between the two opposite scripts.This study first reviews the script-opposition and puts it into the semantic category to obtain the formalization,and then puts the formalization of the scriptopposition based on the semantic category into the projection mechanism and merge mechanism to obtain formal representation.Semantic script must be generated based on the most prominent semantic category in verbal humor,and the most prominent semantic category is obtained according to the maximation of the meaning.It is found that the mechanisms for generating the script-opposition in verbal humor are the merge mechanism and its two special mechanisms,namely,the comparison mechanism,and the degree mechanism.The merge mechanism refers to the inconsistency or incongruity of meaning caused by the merge of two constitutes in verbal humor to form script opposition.The comparison mechanism refers to two constitutes combined through the operator containing the meaning “to compare”.The degree mechanism is that on the same semantic dimension of the same semantic category,different semantic features carried by different words are contradicted in the degree that results in the script-opposition.Because the way for generating the script-opposition in the comparison mechanism is the shortest,it has become the most economical and concise mechanism in generating the script opposition in verbal humor among two special mechanisms.If the comparison mechanism is not prominent enough,the degree mechanism will activate.If the composition of various constitutes in verbal humor does not cause semantic disharmony,contradiction or anomaly,the degree mechanism will work.The generation of the scriptopposition is caused by the prominence of the two mechanisms of the merge mechanism.