A Semantic Study Of The Noun In Internet Buzzwords “Hen(很) + Noun” Construction From Cognitive Approach

Internet buzzwords are products of social culture and the development of the Internet,and“hen(很)+noun”construction is a typical example.Due to the economy of language and the clarity of communication,“hen(很)+noun”construction is favored by most netizens.This construction(such as“很中国”)breaks traditional grammatical rules and attracts many scholars’attention.The previous literature is mainly studied on the construction itself,semantic features of the noun,pragmatic function of the construction,and reasons for the popularity of the construction,but the research on the internal generative mechanism of the construction is neither sufficient nor in-depth.Based on conceptual blending theory,this thesis analyzes the corpus of Internet buzzwords “hen(很)+ noun” construction in the BCC corpus of Beijing Language and Culture University.This thesis makes a semantic analysis of the noun in “hen(很)+ noun”construction,adopting a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods.This thesis demonstrates semantic types,semantic generation mechanism and sanction conditions of the noun in “hen(很)+ noun” construction.This thesis attempts to solve the following three questions:(1)What are semantic types of “hen(很)+ noun” construction?(2)How are the semantic of “hen(很)+ noun” construction generated?(3)What are sanction conditions of the noun for entering “hen(很)+ noun” construction?Firstly,this thesis collects related corpus of “hen(很)+ noun” construction with BCC corpus and Weibo application software,and uses #Lancs Box 5.1.2 corpus software to screen relevant corpus,and obtains 368 corpus of “hen(很)+ noun” construction.According to Yu Shiwen’s(1998)classification criteria of nouns in Modern Chinese Grammar Information Dictionary,this thesis divides nouns into concrete nouns,proper nouns and abstract nouns,analyzes types of the noun in this construction.This thesis makes a semantic cognitive analysis of the noun in “hen(很)+ noun” construction under conceptual blending theory.By analyzing semantic generation process,this thesis explores semantic generation mechanism,and finally discusses sanction conditions of the noun in “hen(很)+ noun” construction.The major findings of this thesis are as follows:(1)On semantic types,there are four types of the noun in “hen(很)+ noun” construction: people nouns,object nouns,place nouns and abstract nouns,among which people nouns include individual nouns and person nouns,object nouns include mass nouns and animate nouns.(2)On the generation process of “hen(很)+ noun” construction,individual nouns in concrete nouns mainly highlight natural and social attributes’ meaning,such as gender,age,occupation and status,etc,and their semantic usually employs metonymy to represent typical features.Through people’s subjective experience,these nouns activate the semantic cognitive model,and generate new meanings under cognitive construal.Object nouns in concrete nouns highlight extended meanings,and their semantic is metaphorical meanings commonly recognized by the society;In “hen(很)+noun” construction proper nouns’ semantic are relatively complex,mainly focusing on person and place name.Person name refers to certain characteristics of the person,and through the common cognition of both people in their communication,the semantic is relatively fixed,while the metonymy information of place name is more flexible,and their semantic needs to be highlighted according to the context;Abstract nouns in “hen(很)+ noun” construction can directly activate the semantic,highlighting property meaning,state meaning and measurement meaning.(3)Sanction conditions on concrete nouns are mainly to reflect natural attribute,reflect social attribute and express extended meaning.Sanction conditions on proper nouns are mainly to represent person name and represent place name.Sanction conditions on abstract nouns are mainly to express property meaning,express state meaning and express measurement meaning.This thesis can let us further know and understand the formation mechanism of new constructions in the new era,and it provides a new research method for other Chinese construction studies.And it can help Chinese learners to accurately grasp the use of “hen(很)+ noun” construction,and also can offer an enlightening insight into cultural communication.