A Cognitive Semantic Study Of English International Trade Terms

Being widely used in global trade,English international trade terms are a crucial part in foreign trade practices.They are traditionally defined as the 11 price terms in the International Rules for the Interpretation of Trade Terms(INCOTERMS),represented by FOB,CIF.The previous studies on the terms mainly concentrate on prescriptively giving definitions to the terms and describing their correct usages in global trade.By contrast,there are very few cognitive linguistic studies on the English international trade terms in the academic field.For this reason,we attempt to study the terms within the framework of cognitive linguistics.Here are our research questions:(1)How are the English international trade terms rationally identified and classified from the perspective of cognitive linguistics?(2)How are the English international trade terms effectively understood? What are important cognitive semantic mechanisms underlying such terms?Specifically,we do not follow the traditional glossary-based way of defining the terms,which restrictively considers the English international trade terms as the fixed set of price terms.Mainly based on the methodology in terminology study,we build a specialized corpus ofEnglish international trade terms with 612,298 words and use the term extractor Sketch Engine to identify the terms as our research objects.Moreover,we integrate the Event-domain Cognitive Model(ECM)and Conceptual Blending Theory(CBT)to establish the ITE+CB model(ITE is the INTERNATIONAL TRADE EVENT for short).The new model enjoys the merits of the two theories and is capable of explaining cognitive semantic mechanisms of the terms(especially the multiple-word ones).Based on the specialized corpus and a reference corpus—the BNC(British National Corpus),we get 226 identified English international trade terms with the help of Sketch Engine.According to the result from Sketch Engine and the common way of sorting terms in terminology study,we classify the identified terms into the single-word terms and multiple-word terms.The former consist of one single word,adding up to43,while the latter comprise more than one word,totaling 183.Given the frequencies of the two kinds,we find the multiple-word terms are the more representative forms of the English international trade terms in our corpora.After exploring the two kinds,we further find the typical single-word terms are basically in form of nouns,while the typical multiple-word terms are chiefly noun compounds in our corpora.Besides,based on the application of the ITE+CB model to both the single-word terms and multiple-word ones,we find that the cognitivesemantic mechanisms are at the heart of understanding the English international trade terms.To effectively understand the terms,we need to have the knowledge of their existing meaning first.The ITE+CB model is able to specify how the existing meaning cognitively come into being,while the ITE,with examples from the corpora,can further offer hierarchical analyses on the terms in actual use.More specifically,the ITE and CB play different roles in our newly adapted model.On the one hand,the ITE not only serves as a hierarchically structured frame for the semantic construction of the existing meaning,but also discloses how the terms are understood in particular contexts.On the other hand,the blending network of CB offers a sophisticated way to explain the specific processes of the construction of the existing meaning.It turns out that the ITE+CB model helps people to understand the terms;that terms are not monotonous and decontextualized;that their meanings,instead,are dynamically-structured.