A Study Of The Non-correspondence Between The Internal Semantic Components Of The English And Chinese Co-referent Nouns

No one can deny that nouns perform a referential function. Specific nouns are employed to refer to specific objects. The nouns that refer to the same objects in languages are defined as “co-referent nouns” in this thesis. We seek to deal with the English and Chinese co-referent nouns expressing transportation, communication, and science and technology. In spite of the fact that in most cases, we are capable of finding correspondent nouns that refer to the same things, whether the seemingly correspondent nouns are fully correspondent in terms of their respective internal semantic components is an issue requiring our concentration.For instance,mobile telephone and手机(shǒu jī)are reckoned to be co-referent nouns considering that they refer to the same thing.The sight of the word“mobile telephone”,any Chinese who can speak English will take it for granted that the English word“mobile telephone”is well correspondent with its Chinese counterpart“手机”.However,as far as their respective internal semantic components are concerned,the two nouns are not completely correspondent in actuality.The former can be divided into three independent internal semantic components,namely,“mobile+tele+phone,”which is thought to be“a far-away sound”,whereas the latter is analyzable into only two components,that is,“手+机”,which can be literally interpreted as“a handy machine”.The non-correspondence between the internal semantic components of the English and Chinese co-referent nouns has seldom been dwelled on in scholarship and not a single research has been conducted.Within the framework of cognitive linguistics and linguistic world-view, an analysis of the co-referent nouns expressing transportation, communication and technology in both English and Chinese has been achieved in this study. By exemplifying typical kind of polymorphemic co-referent nouns, with the help of Internal Semantic Component Analysis, we assume that there exists striking non-correspondence of the co-referent nouns in languages(in particular in English and Chinese), regardless of the fact that the co-referent nouns refer to the same thing or concept in actuality. Furthermore, we have supplied several factors that give rise to the non-correspondence. The non-correspondence of co-referent in languages is presented in language, philosophy, and modes of thinking. With respect to these primary issues to be touched on, we achieve major findings as follows:First and foremost, English and Chinese have divergent rules of forming words respectively. All the Chinese words investigated in this research are accompanied by a category word in the end. For one thing, the ending category words are highlighted to display a characteristic of holistic concept. Each word is combined together in a certain group. For another, this rule indicates that Chinese are featured by generalizing. All the words discussed center on the general concept. On the contrary, an atomic way of forming words has found wide application in English. English words that are exemplified in this paper are like atoms. There are not any category words in the end.In the second place, it is claimed that the great non-correspondence is closely associated with man’s cognition. Cognitive salience together with metaphor and metonymy exerts an enormous influence on man’s diversified interpretations of the co-referent nouns in languages. Native English speakers and Chinese speakers for the most part have a tendency to highlight different aspects of things according to diverse perspectives.Last but not least, overall speaking, people of different nations tend to have totally distinct modes of thinking. As representation of thinking modes, under no circumstances are languages the same. Each language manifests a way of thinking that is peculiar to the very group of people in that different groups of people have distinguishing understandings, interpretations and experiences of the real world. And perceptions are under the influence of world-view and thinking modes, which can indicate the non-correspondence. On the one hand, Chinese people by and large, are fond of holistic thinking modes whereas, native English speakers are accustomed to microscopic way of thinking. On the other, the English words compared with their Chinese co-referent nouns exhibit more rationalism, while the Chinese ones are prone to be characterized by perceptivity.To sum up, the non-correspondence between the internal semantic components of the English and Chinese co-referent nouns is primarily determined by diverse modes of thinking.