A Cognitive Approach to the Symmetry and Asymmetry in “Up/Down+X” Compounds

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.201214.664How to use a DOI?

Keywords

“Up/down+X” compounds, symmetry, asymmetry, cognitive semantics, coca corpus

Abstract

Symmetry and Asymmetry are two fascinating linguistic phenomena, especially within a pair of compounds with directional morphemes like “up+X” compounds and “down+X” compounds. This paper will systematically study the features of forms and meanings of top 100 frequently used “up+X” compounds and “down+X” compounds which are singled out from coca corpus and meanwhile probes deeper into the formation mechanisms of the characteristics of symmetry and asymmetry of them in terms of cognitive semantics. This study suggests that these 100 pairs of “up+X” compounds and “down+X” compounds represent three features in forms and meanings: full symmetry, partial symmetry, and full asymmetry. In addition, the roles of the directional morphemes up and down in these pairs of “up/down+X” compounds with full symmetry, partial symmetry and full asymmetry differ from each other. This paper concludes that cognitive strategies have an important function in these phenomena, and furthermore human’s embodied experience are equally essential to this features.

Copyright

© 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Ranran Ma
AU  - Weibin Li
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/12/16
TI  - A Cognitive Approach to the Symmetry and Asymmetry in “Up/Down+X” Compounds
BT  - Proceedings of the 2020 3rd International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1044
EP  - 1048
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.201214.664
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.201214.664
ID  - Ma2020
ER  -