英语论文网

According to the investigation, there are 175 words with multiple word-class membership in English and 248 in Chinese. This suggests that word-class transformation without morphological change is almost as common in English as it is in Chinese (Wang, 2006; Shao & Yang, 2022). In addition, English words with multiple word-class membership exceed 20% of the total, which is clearly in line with the academic findings that modern English is gradually approaching an isolating language, most similar to Chinese among synthetic languages (Kastovsky, 1994; Zhou, 2004; Haselow, 2011). This proportion also demonstrates that English is in a transitional stage of language evolution, with much greater flexibility of word classes compared to Old English. In fact, the typological evolution of languages is admitted by the cognitive basis common to all language users. Although Chinese possesses nearly a third more such words than English, it is clear that English at this stage shows an increasing trend in word-class overlapping. This exhibits the high frequency of interaction among word classes in both languages.

Chapter Six Conclusion

6.1 Major Findings

This current research, exploiting the high-frequency word lists compiled from the English and Chinese corpora (COCA and CNC), mainly investigates the word classes of high-frequency words in English and Chinese from the perspective of cognitive semantics. The usage-based thesis of cognitive linguistics is followed to systematically and comprehensively observe and describe the distributions and cognitive characteristics of these word classes. Then, from a cognitive perspective, combined with conceptual space theory (Gärdenfors, 2014), the prototypicality of word classes is analyzed in depth. Moreover, comparing the prototype characteristics of the word-class category in English and Chinese, the thesis summarizes the cognitive mechanisms of the word-class extensions. At the same time, with the essential characteristics of word classes in English and Chinese explained, research attempts to reveal the cognitive differences behind the use of word classes in the two nations. 

Theoretically, this thesis conducts a cognitive typological study of word classes under the guidance of prototype theory. The previous studies of word classes have confirmed its feasibility and this current research can further enhance its explanatory power in explaining the phenomenon of linguistic categories. In addition, the use of conceptual space theory (Gärdenfors, 2014) to explain the semantic characteristics of word classes is helpful to grasp the abstract category of word classes, which will enrich the application of conceptual space theory (Gärdenfors, 2014), and provide a reference for its future applications. Finally, this research combines the prototype theory and conceptual space theory (Gärdenfors, 2014) to explain the prototypicality of word classes, which is a theoretical attempt and innovation. 

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