face名词动用的历时认知分析

A Diachronic Cognitive Analysis of Denominal Verb Face

本文运用COHA历时语料库和COCA共时语料库,考察face用作动词的历时变化和文体分布特征;并结合《Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary》(1755年)和《Oxford English Dictionary》(2009),从认知角度分析face由名词转为动词的语义演变,探讨名词动用的认知机制。研究发现,名转动词的历时变化与社会发展同步,在社会历时变迁较大的时间段内face动用增长较快;face作动词在新闻文体中使用最多,总体上常和消极语义韵词汇共现;名词动用过程中主要依赖转喻机制,名词所内含的动作语义得以突显,转用之后,通过隐喻作用,动用义得到进一步延伸。

Based on Corpus of Historical American English(COHA)and Corpus of Contemporary American English(COCA),as well as Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary,this paper has examined the diachronic change and the register distribution of denominal verb"face",and analyzed its semantic evolution process and the cognitive mechanism of N-V conversion.The results show that the diachronic usage of converted verb is synchronized with social development.In the period of dramatic social change,the verb usage of"face"increased quickly.Denominal verb"face"most frequently appears in newspaper and generally often co-occurs with negative words;in N-V conversion,metonymy plays an important role by highlighting the semantic component detonating action entailed in the semantic content of the noun,and metaphor further extends the lexical meaning of the denominal verb.