A Cognitive Study of N_V Shift Interpretation

This paper studies the comprehension and interpretation of the conversion in English from nouns to verbs, the process of which is termed in this paper the N_V shift. The nouns being converted are called parent nouns(Nv). The paper falls into 5 sections. Following a brief Introduction in Section 1, the Second Section immediately moves to explore how the meaning denoting action may be generated from the parent noun on the basis of the semantic categories or the semantic sub_categories organized in the syntagmatic relation in the N_V shift expression. Section 3 deals with the semantic_pragmatic obstacles which may block the proper interpretation of the N_V shift. Then comes Section 4 which treats the process of the interpretation as the process of pragmatic inference within the theoretical framework of cognitive science, with special reference to Relevance Theory. The last section, Section 5, brings the concluding remarks to the effect that the interpretation through the process of pragmatic inference is strongly influenced by human cognitive strategies, which are to some extent summarized in Sperber & Wilsons Relevance Principle.