A Preliminary Study On The Semantic Integration Of Verb-noun Nominalization

Verb-noun nominalization, as the prototype of grammatical metaphor, has received much attention since its introduction. However, most attention has been paid to its formal variation and its textual and stylistic effects, rather than to its meaning variation and meaning effects. As a matter of fact, verb-noun nominalization is a semantic concept, and it is a matter of choice of meaning. Hence it is more important to study it in terms of meaning.Semantic junction and semantic integration are two important concepts regarding the meaning of grammatical metaphor. In verb-noun nominalization, the congruent verb expresses only one type of intrinsic meanings, that is,'process', while the metaphorical noun expresses two types of intrinsic meanings by semantic junction, that is,'process'and'thing'. These two meanings are both realized as three meta-meanings in texts. Since verb-noun nominalization always occurs in texts, the meaning of its congruent form and that of its metaphorical form both refer to the integration of three meta-meanings. That is to say, the semantic integration of verb-noun nominalization refers to the blending of three meta-meanings determined by the intrinsic meaning. Based on this point of view, the thesis attempts to undertake a preliminary study on the mechanism of semantic integration of verb-noun nominalization.The present study is intended to solve three problems: (i) to explain and define'process'and'thing'and clarify the meta-meanings they determine; (ii) to demonstrate the integrating processes and motivations of both the congruent form and the metaphorical form; (iii) through the statistical analysis of different semantic integration patterns of verb-noun nominalization that occur in 32 news texts, to account for the high practical value of the semantic integration mechanism in constructing and analyzing texts.The study points out that'process'refers to one specific action with certain tense, aspect and voice, and that'thing'is just the reflection and emphasis of the features of the'process'from which it derives and it has no referential meaning but categorical meaning. However, the categorical meaning of'thing'can categorize an action with certain tense, aspect and voice as an entity and engender three different patterns of semantic integration. The study also points out that the semantic integration of verb-noun nominalization refers to a step-by-step blending of three meta-meanings according to their governing power. It is not restricted to the metaphorical form and also occurs in the congruent form. The difference between the two is that the semantic integrating process of the former is much more complex than that of the latter. The metaphorical form and the congruent form of verb-noun nominalization embody four semantic integration patterns. Each pattern corresponds to the emphasis on one meta-meaning, which is in turn in response to one level of communicative motivation and one prominent feature of situation. And all these elements, at different levels, compose a closely related system network. The study infers from a quantitative analysis of the data of 32 news texts that each pattern of semantic integration enjoys high popularity in news texts. The high popularity of these four patterns manifests that the semantic integration mechanism possesses a high practical value in reconstruing human experience and in constructing texts.