A Cognitive Study Of English And Chinese N+N Compounds

N+N compound is a common linguistic phenomenon in English and Chinese.This thesis reveals semantic correlation of N+N compound on the basis of conceptual metaphor and metonymy.It reveals similarities and differences between English and Chinese N+N compounds in terms of morphological/semantic structures and cognitive meanings.First of all,this thesis makes an analysis about morphological structure and semantic relation of English and Chinese N+N compounds and points out the similarities and differences between them.Then it applies conceptual metaphor and metonymy to compare the ways and features of inherent semantic correlation of English and Chinese N+N compounds.This thesis classifies N+N compounds into three general classes such as metaphor-contained N+N compounds,metonymy-contained N+N compounds,metaphor&metonymy-contained N+N compounds,and it does a comparative analysis about ways of cognitive semantic correlations of N+N compounds.English and Chinese N+N compounds influenced by metaphor get metaphorical meaning through feature mapping like form,location,function and characteristic.English and Chinese N+N compounds influenced by metonymy can be interpreted well by means of Idealized Cognitive Models(ICM)and cognitively correlate through Category-and-Property,Thing-and-Part,Action-Object,etc.Metaphor&metonymy-contained English and Chinese N+N compounds form cognitive meaning through feature mapping like form,function and characteristic,and through ICM like Thing-and-Part ICM and Action ICM.On the one hand,both English and Chinese N+N compounds are involved in conceptual metaphor and metonymy,so we can find similar cognitive ways lead to similar cognitive semantic correlation.On the other hand,different thinking ways and linguistic usage of two nations also determine the differences in cognitive correlations between them.