Shape categories revealed by English quasi-classifiers —A case study of sheet
نویسندگان
چکیده
Classifiers are overt linguistic categorisation devices and ‚a unique window‛ into human cognition (Lakoff, 1986). English is traditionally regarded as a non-classifier language, but a closer look shows that English also possesses classifier-like words, called ‘Quasi-Classifiers’/QCLs. This paper focuses on the cognitive categorisation process underlying English QCL usage, and takes the two-dimensional shape-based sheet as an exemplar. 120 concordances of sheet(s) of are extracted from the British National Corpus and then regrouped. It shows that sheet can collocate with words like ‘paper’, ‘bronze’, ‘water’, ‘clay’, ‘flame’, ‘sound’, etc., extending from the saliently flat-shaped to the shapeless and the amorphous, and from the concrete to the abstract. The extension is realised by various cognitive mechanisms, typically via active zone and metaphor. The study will contribute to a general knowledge of human cognition of categories. Shape Categories Revealed by English Quasi-Classifiers—A Case Study of Sheet
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