A Cognitive Approach To The Meaning Construction Of English NV Compounds

English noun-verb(NV)compounds(e.g.,snowfall,homebrew,moonwalk),formed by juxtaposing a noun and a verb,are used widely in present-day English.However,NV compounds have been largely ignored in the study of English compounds.In related research,NV compounds are contained in a type of word formation,noun incorporation,and most scholars ignore the semantic particularity of NV compounds as nouns.So far,little study has been conducted systematically and comprehensively on the meaning construction of NV compounds as an independent research object.Therefore,this study intends to analyze English NV compounds from two cognitive perspectives,construction morphology and metaphor/metonymy.In this thesis,the formal and semantic properties of English NV compounds are fully described,and the underlying cognitive mechanisms are deeply explored,so as to give a holistic account of the meaning construction of English NV compounds.This study retrieves the data from the LADEC which is a total of 253 NV compounds,and explores their semantic and formal properties by R Studio.An experiment is conducted to determine the role of the constructional meaning in interpreting NV compounds.To be specific,this thesis tries to answer the following three questions:(1)What are the schemas of English NV compound macro-construction and meso-constructions?(2)Do NV mesoconstruction schemas bear psychological reality?(3)What are the cognitive operations involved in English NV compounds?Findings are as follows:(1)The schema of English NV compound macroconstruction is formed by the juxtaposition of a noun on the left and a verb on the right,between which a certain thematic relation is held.The semantics of the NV macroconstruction is specified as a certain entity in the specified event activated by the integration of the constituent noun and verb.Based on the thematic role assumed by the constitute noun,NV compounds are subsumed into 10 types of meso-constructions with different degrees of productivity among which meso-constructions with the constituent nouns as patient and agent have a high degree of productivity.The entities denoted by NV compounds include six different types among which the referent of event is the most common type.(2)There are semantic differences between NV meso-construction schemas,which is manifested in that the thematic role of the constituent nouns significantly affects semantic referents of NV compounds containing them.The experiment result shows that NV meso-construction schemas may not have psychological reality and the interpretation of NV compounds is regulated by the core meaning of the NV macro-construction.(3)The construction meaning of English NV compounds is formed by profiling of one element on an event base and can be viewed as a manifestation of the EVENTS ARE OBJECTS metaphor or the ACTION FOR PARTICIPANT metonymy.Overall,there are five patterns of cognitive operations,including metaphor only,metonymy only,metaphor within metonymy,metonymy within metaphor,and metaphor from metonymy.This study reveals the systematic relationships between the form and the meaning of English NV compounds and the deep cognitive mechanisms involved in them,thus helping people better interpret them and justifying the creation of new ones.