A Socio-cognitive Research Of French Loanwords In The Canterbury Tales Based On CCM Model

English,a world-widely used language with a long history,has undergone a long process of evolution.The development of English language could be roughly divided into four key periods: �Old English� period(449-1066),�Middle English� period(1066-1489),�Early Modern English� period(1489-1801),and �Modern English� period(1801-present).To take Geoffrey Chaucer's(1343-1400)birth time as a boundary,Middle English can be classified into early Middle English and late Middle English.For the two hundred years since Normans conquered England in 1066,English has gone through tremendous changes.As a representative writer of the medieval period in England,Chaucer was also the first court writer who completed creations with his own native language.His works have made great contributions to the formation and standardization of Modern English.The famous book,The Canterbury Tales(write as Tales in following chapters),has been widely regarded as a treasure trove of literature.Among the major British writers of the same era,Chaucer was undoubtedly the most widely affected by foreign languages.Chaucer borrowed a large number of foreign words in his works,among which French foreign words topped.In the Middle Ages,English and French exchanges were frequent and some French vocabulary gradually entered English and brought French language and culture.Therefore,English contained much �French features� and these features were successfully �Englishized�.From the perspective of the history of British literary,he has been the most �English� and has won the name of �the Father of English Poetry�.As a great translator and poet due to the clear writing and the accurate language,Chaucer brought light to England and created a large literary garden for those who did not understand French thanks to his far-sighted vision.Therefore,the vocabulary he employed in his works exerted an extremely significant influence on English language in the Middle Ages.This thesis attempts to explore Chaucer's important contribution to the development of English lexis from the viewpoint of cognitive sociolinguistics.Taking the 613 French loanwords in Chaucer's Tales as research objects,the author constructs a CCM model(the first �C�: language contact theory,the second �C�: language covariance theory,�M�: metaphor and metonymy theory)for qualitative and quantitative researches by taking advantages of the four theories.The study finds that CCM model has explanatory power for the analysis of the French loanwords in the Middle times and the mechanism in which French words enter English is closely related to the social factors,such as religion,politics,economy,military and so on,and people's ideology in the Middle Ages.Among those social factors,social life has the greatest impact on the vocabulary.Social factors affect the meaning and use of words and the application of words reflects people's ideology.In Tales,Chaucer adopted a large number of French loanwords,which either completely preserved their form and meaning in French,or retained the form but with changed meaning,or lost the original form and meaning at the same time.In short,they have all been successfully �Englishized� and generally been accepted by English lexical system,laying a solid foundation for the development of English and the emergence of standard English.Among them,the �Englishized� process was closely related to human cognition and social factors which always affect the cognition of human being.