A Cognitive Typology Approach To English And Chinese High-Frequency Verbs With Multiple Word-Class Membership

Verbal heterosemy is scientifically defined as a verb with two or more categories at the synchronic level,and all these heterosemous categories are labeled in the dictionary.Previous studies have dealt with their definitions,classifications,morphologies,syntactic and semantic features,providing a solid theoretical basis for current research.However,most of these studies do not distinguish their morphological distinctions,and simple verbs,namely monosyllabic verbs in Chinese and morphologically underived verbs in English,have not been paid due attention.In particular,the scientific quantitative and qualitative analyses,with the help of large-scale corpus data,are still far from sufficient.Therefore,focusing on the top 1000 English and Chinese simple verbs obtained from the high-frequency word lists compiled by COCA and CNC,this study attempts to observe and analyze their heterosemous distributions and types,along with their linguistic typological universals and variations within the framework of cognitive typology.Furthermore,it is expected to discover the cognitive motivations and mechanisms behind verbal heterosemy and further reveal the laws and characteristics of human event cognition.Firstly,English and Chinese high-frequency simple verbs show a strong ability for lexical derivation,constituting the prototype of event encoding in two languages.Both English and Chinese simple verbs can be widely used as nouns,which stem from the general human ability of conceptual reification.In addition,they can be used as other content words like adjectives and adverbs in large numbers,reflecting their similar event conceptualization patterns and relexicalization tendencies.Moreover,verbs and their heterosemous members are not equal in the word-class category,displaying the graded boundary permeability and cognitive accessibility.The word-class extension between verbs and nouns,adjectives,and adverbs,etc.shows a continuum between temporality and atemporality.These typical features of verbal heterosemy demonstrate the cognitive universals between English and Chinese speakers in terms of event lexicalization,embodied experience and encoding of non-macro events or maximally individualized events,and lexicon-grammar continuum.However,it is worth noting that the heterosemous distributions and types of Chinese monosyllabic verbs are significantly richer than those of English ones,displaying its strong tendency for relexicalization or grammaticalization and prototypical status as a mighty category in Chinese.As for the cognitive motivations behind verbal heterosemy,it can be ascribed to the differences in event construal,verbal mightiness,and action and temporal construal.In brief,the differences in the heterosemous distributions and types of simple verbs between English and Chinese are rooted in the different cognitive construals of usage events in time and space between English and Chinese nations.Furthermore,the word-class extension of English and Chinese simple verbs is cognitively grounded in the embodied experience in physical spaces within the event-based cognitive model,as well as the most basic cognitive mechanisms of conceptual metaphor and metonymy.In a nutshell,research into the cognitive typology of English and Chinese high-frequency simple verbs with multiple word-class membership reveals more similarities than differences in event structural representation and event construal between English and Chinese communities,and the differences are essentially rooted in their unique thinking preferences for spatio-temporal cognition.The heterosemous distributions and types of simple verbs in English and Chinese imply a strong boundary permeability between content words,reflecting the common cognitive mode of human event conceptualization,which enjoys important typological significance and sheds more light on language teaching and learning.