A Cognitive Study Of N-V Conversion In English

N-V conversion is a common language phenomenon. It is a process in which a noun is used as a verb without any change in the form. The original noun in this process is called "parent noun" and the verb thus formed is called "denominal verbs". This thesis conducts a research on N-V conversion from the cognitive perspective to achieve three purposes. First, this thesis attempts to analyze the reasons for the pervasive use of denominal verbs. Secondly, we try to explore the cognitive basis for the generation of denominal verbs and prove the existence of conceptual metonymy and conceptual metaphor as the operational mechanism of N-V conversion. We intend to classify denominal verbs into different types based on our data collection. Lastly, we try to solve the problem of how people perceive the meaning of denominal verbs by adopting Conceptual Blending Theory.This study adopts the qualitative method and we carry out our study mainly through data collection and theoretical reasoning. According to the cognitive basis of N-V conversion, we classify the denominal verbs into two categories:metonymy-based denominal verbs and metaphor-based denominal verbs. At the same time, we expound on the meanings of denominal verbs through conceptual blending process.We generalize the reasons for the pervasive use of denominal verbs from three aspects, language motivations, rhetorical motivations and psychological motivations. Based on the cognitive study on the generation and comprehension of denominal verbs, we find 7 types of metonymy-based denominal verbs:Agent-triggered Action Metonymy, Instrument-triggered Action Metonymy, Patient-triggered Action Metonymy, Locatum-triggered Action Metonymy, Location-triggered Action Metonymy, Time-triggered Action Metonymy, Result-triggered Action Metonymy, which prove that conceptual metonymy is the cognitive basis for the generation of denominal verbs. More importantly, since there is a shortage of researches on the metaphor-based denominal verbs, we collect many fresh examples of this category and sum up 12 types of metaphor-based denominal verbs according to their contents of source domain: Animal-Action Metaphor, Construction-Action Metaphor, Human Body Part-Action Metaphor, Food-Action Metaphor, Instrument-Action Metaphor, Appellation-Action Metaphor, Clothes-Action Metaphor, Natural Phenomenon-Action Metaphor, Location-Action Metaphor, Profession-Action Metaphor, Furnishing Textiles-Action Metaphor, Proper Noun-Action Metaphor, and we describe their meaning construction process in detail through conceptual integration network, which show that conceptual metaphor is an indispensible cognitive mechanism for the generation of many complicated denominal verbs and the conceptual integration network is of great value for their interpretation.N-V conversion is a THING FOR ACTION metonymy and conceptual metonymy is the basic operational mechanism for people to use denominal verbs. The salient entity provides mental access to the less salient ones in the same idealized cognitive model and metonymically denotes the whole action based on contiguity. Conceptual metonymy is a cognitive phenomenon for people to understand the world experience. At the same time, for groups of metaphorically used denominal verbs, conceptual metaphor forms the cognitive basis for their generation as well. There exists similarity between a source domain and a target domain. And the content or structure of the source domain is partially mapped to target domain to facilitate our understanding of the action or process that a denominal verb denotes. In a word, conceptual metonymy, conceptual metaphor and Conceptual Blending Theory all play significant roles in the production and understanding of N-V conversion.