A Study On The Construction And Construal Of Semantic Network For English Roots In Hand-action Domain

The derivation is the core method of word formation in modern English,which is the way of forming a new word by attaching a prefix or suffix to the base.It is particularly significant to study the semantics of the root words acquired through derivation.Thus,English word roots have gained the attention of many scholars.Through reviewing the relevant literature,this paper figures out that most of the studies on word roots by domestic and foreign scholars are from the perspective of word formation,often concentrating on the formal features,definitions,classifications,scopes,and word formation rules of word roots,but rarely investigating them from the perspective of semantics.Although cognitive linguistics is a discipline that studies language meanings,the semantic study of word formation from the cognitive linguistic perspective focuses on compound words and English neologisms and ignores the semantic study of roots and affixes.In this paper,English roots in the hand-action cognitive domain are selected as the object of study.The high frequency of daily experience of hand movements as a basic human bodily experience determines the high frequency of the use of linguistic expressions.Therefore,the number of roots denoting hand movements is large,and their frequent use and strong word formation capacity are rich in research value.This paper will investigate the cognitive basis of the semantic production of the roots,systematically examine the semantic classification,word formation rules,and word formation features of the roots in the hand-action domain,and construct a semantic network of the root-affix configuration of the roots in the hand-action domain.This study applies the Conceptual Blending Theory and Construal Theory to the cognitive semantic analysis of English roots in the hand-action domain,and explores the process of semantic construction of the roots in this domain.It also attempts to explore tentative and feasible paths for the research of roots and affixes in other cognitive domains and to detect actionable methods for the learning and teaching of English vocabulary.study takes theoretical Prototype Theory,Conceptual Blending Theory,and Construal Theory in Cognitive Linguistics as its framework.The Prototype Theory is the theoretical cornerstone of this study,which is used to explain the typical hand-action roots and the typical semantics of the roots;Conceptual Integration Theory is used to interpret the formation process of the periphery semantics of the roots;and Construal Theory is an in-depth interpretation of the semantic network of the roots.Based on the existing materials,this paper adopts a qualitative approach and attempts to answer the following questions:(1)What is the cognitive basis for the semantic form of the English roots in the hand-action domain?(2)What are the word-formation patterns of the English roots in the hand-action domain?(3)How can we analyze the prototypical meanings and the periphery meanings of the English roots in the hand-action domain in order to construct the semantic network of their root-affix configuration?(4)How can we construe the complex semantic network of word roots?To answer the above questions,this paper collects and classifies the words and meanings of the roots in the hand-action domain from the root dictionaries,namely,Danner’s Thesaurus of English Word Roots,Li Pingwu’s English Roots and How to Use Them to Decipher Their Derivatives,Liu Yi’s A Dictionary of English Word Roots,Jiang Zheng’s The Classification Dictionary of English Roots,Prefixes,and Suffixes.The findings of the research are as follows:(1)The meaning of the English roots in the hand-action domain should be traced back to the original meanings of the letters,which reflect people’s original understanding of the objective truth.Under the condition of backward primitive productivity and low level of understanding,it is difficult for people to make a scientific explanation of the objective world,so they believe that the objective world is dominated by a supernatural divine force,so the law of everything in the universe is the will of God.As productivity and cognitive levels rise,the meaning of letters expands and provides a semantic basis for English vocabulary.(2)The English roots in the hand-action domain present with a configuration of prefixes and suffixes,where the prefix focuses on regulating the temporal and situational information of the roots and the suffix is responsible for modulating the shift of the roots from a dynamic restricted visual frame to a relatively static maximal visual frame representation.The main focus of this study is on the configuration and semantic integration of the roots and prefixes.According to the representation of the semantic classification of the prefixes,the high-frequency English roots in the hand-action domain all can be combined with the prefixes in the cognitive domains of orientation.(3)The semantic formation of the English roots in the hand-action domain is the product of conceptual integration.The prototypical meanings are derived from the developmental semantic chain of the alphabet and etymological knowledge.The peripheral meanings take the prototypical meanings as cognitive reference points,influenced by the meanings of the prefixes,encyclopedia knowledge,etymological knowledge,and semantic context.In addition,the cognitive prominence mechanism has an impact on the semantic structure.(4)This study discovers that the changes in the morphology of derived words reflect the shifts in the cognitive styles and perspectives of the British people,which are the result of the interaction between the British people and the reality world they lived in.The findings of this study provide further evidence of the basic principles of cognitive linguistics that reality determines cognition and cognition determines language.To sum up,the construction of the semantic network of English roots in the hand-action domain further completes and supplements the defects of previous lexical studies in terms of unclear semantic classification,weaknesses in semantic network construction,and unclear semantic derivation paths,and provides a new template for the study of other roots’ semantics.The semantic network of the root-affix configuration will be beneficial for the teaching and learning of English vocabulary.