Investigation On Cruse’s Lexical Configuration Hypothesis Under The Linguistic Unit’s Sanction Theory

Lexical semantics is the study of words’ meaning,which is a branch of semantics.Scholars began to pay attention to the meaning of words in very early times.It was the central topic of literary.However,during the period of the literary language,the attention to the words’ meaning was restricted to the classical words,and the research objects were discrete.The relation among different words did not get enough attention.British Linguist D.A.Cruse was the first scholar who made research on lexical semantics systematically and published Lexical Semantics at University of Cambridge Press in 1986.This book has profound influence on the field of linguistics.Lexical Semantics has been listed as a reference book at many foreign universities.The author makes research on Cruse’s lexical configuration hypothesis and finds that Cruse’s lexical configuration hypothesis is original,and it has influence on promoting the study of lexicon with an enlightening significance.However,the content of lexical configuration hypothesis is also questionable.The author explores the rationality and imperfection of Cruse’s lexical configuration hypothesis under linguistic unit’s sanction theory.The “full sanction” and “partial sanction” in linguistic unit’s sanction theory elaborate the relation of different words’ meaning in the hierarchy of a category.It is good for scholars to rethink Cruse’s lexical configuration hypothesis and supplement it.At the same time,this study can further enrich the lexicon theory,and provide a new perspective and scientific method for lexical research.Because there are not many researches on Cruse’s lexical configuration hypothesis and rare literature about using linguistic unit’s theory to analyze lexical configuration,the author makes an innovation by analyzing lexical configuration under linguistic unit’s sanction theory.Cruse’s lexical configuration is divided into two parts: hierarchies and proportional series(“cells”).Aiming at researching on the rationality and imperfection of Cruse’s lexical configuration hypothesis,the author uses Langacker’s linguistic unit’s sanction theory to analyze it and draws the following conclusions: Cruse’s lexical configuration hypothesis is original,and it shows the relation of dominance between superordinates and subordinates in hierarchies.In addition,it reflects the connection among words in cells based on metaphor and encyclopedia knowledge.However,it has its imperfection that it shows no internal relation between words,and confuses logical relation and words’ meaning.In his lexical configuration hypothesis,hyponymy is purely related to denotation and connotation in logics instead of the internal semantic relation in language system.It is not scientific to bind semantic relation with logical relation of words.It lacks scientific explanation in Cruse’s “cells”.In other word,there is no full sanction or partial sanction in a cell,which causes two or more than two categories to exist in a cell.The lexical configuration that crosses different categories is questionable and needs improving.