The Cognitive Semantic Study On“A+N”Disyllabic Adjectives

The “A+N” disyllabic adjective,which is composed of an adjective morpheme and a noun morpheme,belongs to heterogeneous morpheme word formation.This thesis takes388 “A+N” disyllabic adjectives in the Modern Chinese Dictionary（7th Edition）as the research object,and explores these words from the version of structure,semantics,cognition,especially categorization.Firstly,it analyses the structure and semantics of “A+N” adjectives from the perspective of traditional linguistics.According to the structural relationship of morphemes,these words can be divided into two categories: attributive structure,predicate-object structure.Semantics starts from the aspects of morpheme meaning,the relationship between morpheme and lexical meaning.The semantics of adjective morpheme are distributed in six categories: psychological class,perceptual class,color class,judgment class,measure class,description class.The semantics of noun morpheme are distributed in seven categories: human-body class,natural class,artificial class,consciousness class,social class,space-time class,attribute class.The relationship between morpheme meaning and lexical meaning can be divided into two categories: for“A+N” attributive adjective,the combination or fusion of morpheme constitutes a noun meaning,then the noun meaning extends to an adjective meaning;for “A+N”predicate-object adjective,the combination or fusion of morpheme constitutes an adjective meaning directly.Secondly,it elaborates the formation mechanism and understanding way of "A+N" adjectives from the perspective of cognitive linguistics.The formation of these adjectives is the result of the interaction of four cognitive mechanisms: spreading activation,conceptual metaphor,conceptual metonymy and image schema.These adjectives can be understood by six different ways: direct combination;combination + metonymy;combination + metaphor;combination + metonymy + metaphor;combination + metonymy+ schema;combination + metonymy + metaphor;combination + metonymy + schema;combination + metonymy + metaphor + schema.Thirdly,it explores the evolution path of "A+N" adjectives from noun category to adjective category based on cognitive category theory."A+N" adjectives have transferred from noun category into adjective category,and it is mainly reflected in semantic evolution and grammatical evolution.Semantic evolution is manifested in three aspects:static to dynamic,reference to statement,quantitative characteristic to degree characteristic.Grammatical evolution is reflected in lexical level and syntactic level.Lexically,it appears as phonetic changes: non soft voice to soft voice;non“r”-retroflexion to “r”-retroflexion.Syntactically,it is characterized by entering into specific syntactic slots: acting as attributive;acting as predicate;modified by adverbs.Four reasons for the transfer of functional categories are as follows: practical pragmatic needs;grammatical metonymy;lexical innovation;syntactic and semantic constraints.