Studies Of Associative Compounds From A Cognitive Perspective

In this paper, the writer centers on the study of associative compounds, focusing on how the signifier (in this case, the form of the character) represents the signified (in this case, the cognitive category represented by the character), attempting to find out the cognitive models and tools employed by Chinese community in the making of associative compounds and to make a contrast with the findings from English studies so as to find out the similarities and differences between the two.Associative compounds are classified into two types based on the categorization theory from cognitive linguistics: the first group are those that what is represented by the form of the character is pait of the cognitive category represented by the character; and the second group are those that what is represented by the form of the character is relevant to the cognitive category the character represents.Conclusions drawn from the studies of these two types of associative compounds prove the opinion held by cognitive linguists that cognitive abilities as reflected by languages are more or less universally shared. In the case of associative compounds the forms of the characters that signify such categories as concrete objects, action etc. act as prototypical members of the categories they represent; and the forms of the characters that signify more abstract categories act as a source through which the more abstract categories are understood.Through the study the writer holds the opinion that metaphor and metonymy are cognitive tools used by the Chinese community when they undertake to understand more abstract category. This finding conforms to that found by cognitive linguists based on the study of English. What is unique in the case of associative compounds lie in the property and abstract action categories when the forms of the characters provide typical examples through which the categories is understood, the cognitive tool employed in this occasion can be classified as one type of metaphor as it is the understanding of one domain through a more concrete one, but different from the conceptual metaphor defined by cognitive linguists.