On English And Chinese Adjective Nominalization In The Framework Of Cognitive Grammar

The purpose of this research is to study the adjective nominalization of English and Chinese. Linguistists home and abroad have made a comparatively in-depth and thorough study of nominalization. Bloomfield proposes that we should group the words according to immediate constituent analysis. Chomsky's theory touched on S- and D- structures and believes that nominalization is the result of syntactic structure. Halliday deems that it is a nominalization is a tool of grammatical metaphor, i.e. the use of a nominal form to express a process (formally expressed by verbs) or a property (formally expressed by adjectives). Langacker deals with this issue from three basic problems, which is much deeper and fundamental. There are mainly two viewpoints—nominalization and word class unchangeableness—among the Chinese scholars. As a matter of fact, nominalization can be realized in different ways. This thesis aims to study adjective nominalization within the framework of Cognitive Grammar, that is, we propose that to some extent the rules of human's cognitive process contributes to adjective nominalization, so it is a good way to explain this problem with human's cognitive rules.Based on English and Chinese corpus, the thesis is to conduct an investigation into the model of adjective nominalization within the framework of Cognitive Grammar, including such questions as adjective nominalization conditions, types and degree, with a view to uncovering the properties and cognitive rules of both languages with a corpus-based approach.Through analysis and discussion, our research may be summarized as follows: adjective nominalization is a process from a typical adjective to a noun; the adjective elements gradually distinguish to zero, and its original meaning denoting properties to refer to the thing containing the properties. In this process, metonymy and the shift of profile is the driving force of adjective nominalization. The major findings are in some measure instructive to give aid to such practical fields as lexicography, language teaching and learning.