Cognitive Study Of English Creative Noun-Noun Compounds

Creative N+N compounding, or metaphor/metonymy N+N compounding, is a productive way to form new words. Due to its large size and complex semantics, vocabulary of this kind has attracted much attention from scholars, but the relevant interpretation of it is not enough. From cognitive perspective, this research focuses on the semantics of creative N+N compounding, explores the cognitive mechanism of creative N+N compounding on the theories of conceptual metaphor, metonymy and conceptual blending theories, and reveals its implications on English vocabulary teaching.Study shows that creative N+N compounds involve metaphor/metonymy and the interaction of the two nouns; conceptual metaphor, metonymy and conceptual blending are equally important in linguistic comprehension. The integration of these theories provides an effective interpretation mechanism, which is characterized by conceptual metaphor/metonymy and conceptual blending:the former primarily works on the constituents of the compounds and then conceptual blending works on the compound as a whole; the latter primarily works on the combination of the compound and then conceptual metaphor/metonymy works on the compound as a whole. A good command of the cognitive mechanism of creative N+N compounds will increase the speed and promote the efficiency of understanding, memorizing and applying such compounds. Study also shows that the creativity of creative N+N compounds results from abstract thinking and imagery thinking in our cognitive mechanism. Abstract thinking helps to construct the concepts of nouns while imagery thinking helps to set up the relationships within the concepts or between the concepts of two nouns by means of imagination and association; both of them are extremely productive and creative. The research on creative N+N compounding will help learners enlarge vocabulary size, improve lexical sensitivity, accelerate metaphorical thinking. Specially, the research can reduce learners’difficulty in understanding, enhance learning efficiency, keep their interest in autonomous learning, and develop their language thinking ability.