2.3 Chapter Summery
This chapter can mainly be pided into two parts. First, the literature review about the subject of this thesis: blending words. Second, the literature review about the three key theories.
Starting with the current situation of neologism, this chapter has firstly presented the fact that the emergence of neologisms is of great significance. The evolution and development of language are generally regarded as the mirror of our society. After reviewing the past and development of novel blending words and making a comprehensive consideration of various external factors, the reasons have been induced to explain why there was a boom of novel blending words.
Next, the focus shifted to the three key theories. CMT analyses involve mappings between precisely two conceptual structures; CBT typically makes use of a four-space model. These spaces include two “input” spaces (which, in a metaphorical case, are associated with the source and target of CMT), plus a “generic” space, representing conceptual structure that is shared by both inputs, and the “blend” space, where material from the inputs combines and interacts. While PT with its distinctive symbol of “family resemblance”, demonstrated clearly how categorization is critical to human beings in cognitive activities.
From what have been mentioned above, it’s quite clear that abundant academic studied have been conducted both in the field of lexicon and cognitive linguistics. Besides, many progresses have also been made with the development of our time and the evolution of language. However, due to the freshness and vogue of novel blending words, very few studies have shed light on it. There’re only those scholars who dedicated in using one theory, such as CMT and CBT to explain a certain feature of novel blending words. As a result, this paper intends to probe into the meaning construction of many specific new blending words from a multi-theoretical perspective in order to achieve a reasonable annotation with CMT, CBT and PT as the theoretical basis, which is exactly the originality of this thesis. In addition, this chapter paves the way for the further study on the cognitive mechanism towards neologisms of human beings for the following chapters.
3 Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Novel Blending Words
Researches on metaphor have undergone a long history and most scholars regard the usage of metaphor as a figure of speech. However, people began to research metaphor from a cognitive perspective in the 18th century. From then on, metaphor was regarded not only as a kind of language phenomenon, but also a cognitive phenomenon as well as of human being’s most basic cognitive ways. 英语混成新词建构新解多元理论视域(5):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_4512.html