A Cognitive Study Of The Selection Between-ing And-ed Participles In English Participial Compounds

English participial compounds are compounds with-ing participles and-ed participles in English. Compounding is one of the mostproductive word-formation in English, and therefore, is an important topic of studies in English morphology. The previous studies on English participial compounds have been done too much on internal structures and internal semantic meanings of them and there are few systematic researches on the selection between-ing and-ed participles. From the perspective of linguistic evolution, the thesis has provided a systematic account of the selection between-ing and-ed participles.In the thesis, the definition of participial compounds has been made and according to grammatical functions, participial compounds can be divided into three types, nominal participial compounds, adjectival participial compounds and adverbial participial compounds. The thesis has made an account of the cognitive nature of English participial compounds and pointed out that they are the results of linguistic evolution. Specifically speaking, participial compounds have been evolved from the finite or nonfinite clauses that are complex in linguistic forms. Based on their cognitive nature, the thesis has further studied their evolutionary processes of participial compounds, namely, the focusing process and the abstracting process. The focusing process refers to the process of focusing on those typical and important semantic information that are prominent to the language user. The content of the focusing process includes functions, the behavior characteristics of actions, the characteristics or qualities of objects or persons, the degree of a characteristic and the manner of action, etc. The abstracting process of participial compounds involves the process of the selection between-ing and-ed participles. The standard of the participial selection is the active and passive logic subject-predicate relationships between-ing participles and-ed participles and their logic subjects. By instance analysis, it can be concluded below:(1) In nominal participial compounds,-ing participles are basically selected except that-ed participles are selected in those participial compounds adding by-ness suffix.(2) In adjectival participial compounds,-ing or-ed participles are selected according to active and passive logic subject-predicative relationships.(3) The participial selection of adverbial participial compounds is the same with that of adjectival participial compounds. In adverbial participial compounds,-ing and-ed participles are selected in accordance to active and passive logic subject-predicative relationships. Besides, a reasonable account of the selection of-ed participles are provided for participial adjectives formed by "noun+-ed suffix". The selection of-ed participles in this type is the product of the semantic basis of denominal verbs, the cultural basis of "God endows everything" and the human analogical thinking and mechanism.The study made in the thesis can enrich the application of linguistic evolution theory and be helpful for language users to select-ing and-ed participles in English participial compounds.