From Verb to Noun: category shift mechanisms of Chinese VV nominal

This study explores the cognitive and syntactic-semantic mechanisms involved in the categorial shift of VV nominals from verbs to nouns. VV nominals refer to nouns consisting of two verb morphemes, such as biān 编 ‘edit’ + jí 辑 ‘edit’, which render a nominal meaning ‘editor’. The structure and meaning of the shift can be represented as: V_m1(biān)+V_m2(jí) → ‘edit’ + ‘edit’ → ‘editor’. VV nominals form a unique category that needs to be closely examined in terms of the grammatical and cognitive changes involved. Most previous studies focused on their syntactic properties (Chan 2002) or the distinction of morphological subtypes (Liu 1997, Chen 2008). Less attention has been paid to their internal lexical relations with a diachronic concern, let along their functional extensions. This study takes on this special type of VVs that function mainly as nouns and looks into the category-shifting mechanisms in the lexicalization process from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives.
A total of 456 VV nominals are collected from Modern Chinese Dictionary (6th Edition) for a detailed analysis of their lexicalization patterns. It is found that synchronically observed morpho-semantic distinctions can be accounted for by conceptual manipulations of metaphorical and metonymic transfers, which are accompanied with a series of grammatical changes in their diachronic development. The lexicalization process of VV nominals involves two steps: first, two morphemes are combined (sum of sense1 + sense2) or blended (with additional meanings) into one verb through six possible interrelations: coordinate, modifier-head, verb-purpose, verb-result, pivotal, sequential; second, the compound verb undergoes a cognitive transfer to be used as a noun. Two kinds of mechanisms are discussed in the proposed account: cognitive mechanism and syntactic-semantic mechanism.
The motivating cognitive mechanisms pertain to metonymy and metaphor. Metonymy is most commonly found to trigger category shift. It occurs mostly in action ICM (Lakoff 1987:68), in which the event-denoting VV nominals are used to represent salient participants roles in the event, such as subject-agent, object-patient, result, instrument, location, time, ability and means. The metaphors involved in VV nominals are structural metaphors mapping from an action domain to abstract domain (Lackoff＆Johnson 1980:11-23). Structural metaphor can be further divided into integral metaphor (both Vs are metaphorical, such as mó-cā 摩擦) and partial metaphor (only one V is metaphorical, such as fú 浮 in fú-xiǎng 浮想). The two threads of conceptual transfers work interactively to trigger the categorical shift.
It is also found that VV nominals display different syntactic-semantic properties through the category transfer, typically accompanied by diachronic changes, especially when they enter a “grammatical incline”. The semantic properties of VV nominals are of three types: [+static]; [+referential]; [+quantity], while the syntactic change from verbs to nouns is evidenced in the emergence of nominal features in specific syntactic slots: (1) nominal markers such as suǒ 所+X (referring to result or object/patient of an event), yǐ 以+X (referring to instruments of an event), X+ zhě 者 (referring to subject/agent or object/patient of an event); (2) use in the subject/object position, referring to agent/patient or nominal event and implying the acquisition of referential and static meaning; (3) occurring with existential verbs such as yǒu 有 ‘have’ or wú 无 ‘not have’, signaling the compatibility with quantity measures. The study is significant in giving a principled account of the synchronic and diachronic processes involved in the category shift of VV nominals, which shows how cognitive mechanisms and grammatical patterning work hand-in-hand in motivating and shaping the linguistic changes.