Analysis of Grammaticalization of Metaphorical Nouns in English

【摘要】：Abstract： Grammaticalization of nouns refers to the formation and phenomena of grammatical form of nouns. In this paper， it mainly talks about grammaticalization of of English affixes， of English unit nouns and of English body-part nouns through metaphor to make us better understand grammatucalization.

Key words： grammaticalization； metaphor； English nouns

一.Grammaticalization and metaphor

Grammaticalization usually refers to the process or phenomenon of the content meaning of words changing into grammatical function. Through Grammaticalization， the units of solid words gradually evolve into virtual syntactic constituents， and phrases or syntactic structures are gradually solidified into words. Metaphor is regarded as a cognitive means， which expresses abstract concepts with concrete concepts. The evolution of grammaticalization generally follows the path of \"concrete - abstract / less abstract - more abstract\"， which is consistent with the metaphorical meaning effect. Metaphorical English nouns often achieve grammaticalization.

二.Grammaticalization of English affixes

In English， the word \"gate\" achieve grammaticalization through the change from a noun \"a similar device that slides across an opening， often folded into a smaller space as it is opened\" to derivative suffix for the meaning of scandal. It is derived from Watergate Scandal of American. As we all know， \"Watergate\" （also known as \"Watergate scandal\"） is a very shameful political scandal in American history. After this major event， whenever a country's national leaders encounter a crisis or scandal in power， they often are given the name \"gate\" by the press， such as \"Irangate\"， \"zippergate and so on. The words ended by the \"gate\" specially refer to shocking political scandals which cover up the truth. Now \"-gate\" is not only confined to politics， but also refers to any new scandal or news. \"Gate\" has a function of segmentation， which can be divided into two parts， inside the space and outside the space. The outside is open， and the internal is hidden， which has some similarities with the scandal. The scandal is hidden before disclosure and the event is covered up. When a scandal is revealed， it is equivalent to the opening of the closed \"gate\". The semantic meaning of \"gate\" is extended by metaphor and is given new meanings. In 1997， the American lexicographer Rawson proclaimed \"- gate\" as a derogatory suffix， and since then it has been recognized as a \"productive suffix\"， meaning that \"- gate\" has become a grammatical form. The evolution of \"gate\" from a free morpheme to a suffix can be attributed to the process of grammaticalization.

三.Grammaticalization of English unit nouns

English uncountable nouns can be divided by unit noun. As a result of repeated use of these unit noun phrases， their structure and collocation has been relatively fixed. These unit nouns are achieved from common nouns and they are metaphorical. If carefully analyze these examples， people can still feel the original intent. In these examples， “chocolate” is compared to “bar” and “grass” is compared to “blade”. These are obviously based on the principle of similarity， so that the substance referred by uncountable nouns is given the exact form. In the example， abstract “hope” is compared to a relatively concrete “ray” and “ounce” of weight is used to measure abstract “resolution”， which is clearly consistent with the cognitive laws of metaphor grasping the relatively familiar or easy field of experience to organize the relatively unfamiliar or difficult field. In addition to uncountable nouns， some countable nouns， although they have fixed forms， can still be depicted their group characteristics by means of some vivid and obvious nouns as unit nouns， such as： “a sea of people” and “a rain of bullets”. From the above examples， we can see that these unit nouns have the characteristic of classifying according to the internal state of the object， which indicates the unit nouns are in the process of grammaticalization of \"quality\".

四.Grammaticalization of English body-part nouns

The grammaticalization of body-part nouns in English refers to the phenomenon that the spatial relationship of body-part nouns is presented mainly by prepositional phrases or adverbs about them. People can see the process of grammatical evolution of body-part noun “head” in the phrases like “the head of a bed”， “the head of a flower”， “the head of a page”， “the head of a line”， “ahead of time”； “go ahead”. According to the Etymology Dictionary， “ahead” is evolved by the “prefix a + head”. It can be seen from the examples， “head” is used to reflex position of entity by metaphor， but with the head position of human mapping the similar parts of the object， and then further extend from the object domain and to the abstract domain （such as team， time）.The nouns combined with “head” gradually become abstract， and the real meaning of “head” is gradually fading. It is finally solidified into a word form which represents the meaning of space. But it can be seen that “ahead” is still in the evolutionary process of transition to grammaticalization， because it does not divorce from the marker “of” indicating possessive case when it represents the spatial meaning \"in front of\"， such as “ahead of him”， “ahead of time”. This is the grammaticalization of English body-part nouns.

五.Conclusion

Grammaticalization of nouns is a complex linguistic and metaphorical phenomenon. That is the transfer and projection of word meaning from concrete to abstract. This paper helps people have a basic understanding of the grammaticalization of some types of English nouns and promote them carry out a more complete and thorough study about it.

References

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作者簡介：張月，女，漢族，山東濟寧人，研究生在讀，單位：青島科技大學外國語言學及應用語言學專業，研究方向：翻譯。