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The study of word classes is the basis of grammar research in both English and Chinese. Palmer (1971), while rejecting the division of word classes in early grammar studies, recognizes the importance of word classes in linguistics. From past studies, it is not difficult to find that there have been divergences in word classes. In the pursuit of a precise and perfect word-class system, the study of word classes should not be limited to theory but focus on application, looking for a usage-based interpretation of word classes. Nowadays, the study of language from a cognitive perspective has become a major direction in linguistic research, which offers new approaches to the study of word classes.

Cognitive linguistics regards word classes as categories based on prototype theory (Hopper & Thompson, 1984; Bhat, 1994; Croft, 2001; Taylor, 2001; Cacoullos, 2002), which treats the relation between word classes as the relationship between categories. Yuan (1995) has also given a system of Chinese word-class categories based on prototype theory, but Zhao and Wang (2008) argue that this view of prototypical categories is not scientific on the basis of the psychology of subjectivity. In particular, the degree of prototype or typicality should reflect the differences in members within the same category rather than the distinction between categories. The previous analyses of word-class prototypicality are dominated mainly by semantic features without due attention to their usage-based situations. Therefore, it is necessary to organically combine the prototypical analysis of semantic categories with the usage-based context. Following cases like “fine” and 通 show their multiple word classes as their usages vary.

1.2 Research Contents

This current research, exploiting the high-frequency word lists compiled from the English and Chinese corpora, mainly investigates the word classes of high-frequency words in English and Chinese from the perspective of cognitive semantics. The usage-based principle of cognitive linguistics is followed to systematically and comprehensively observe and describe the distributions and cognitive tendencies 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, the cognitive differences behind the use of word classes are to be revealed in the two nations. Specifically, the following questions will be addressed:

(1) What are the cognitive prototype effects of English and Chinese word classes?

(2) What are the cognitive typological groundings for English and Chinese word-class prototypicality and extensions?

Language reflects empirical reality, and as language communities live in different physical and social backgrounds, the prototypes of word classes must be different. On th本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。