Reinforcing adjectives In english and vietnamese: A cognitive semantic perspective

Abstract

This study attempts to reach a thorough understanding of the Reinforcing adjectives in the view of Cognitive semantics through the exploration of the syntactic and semantic features of the Reinforcing adjectives. The heart of the study is to find out the semantic and the syntactic features that adjectives have in common which make it possible for them to develop into reinforcers or markers of degree. Further more, the syntactic and semantic features of the nouns that reinforcing adjectives combined with are also investigated in order to account for their well-formedness and their interpretability in lexical semantic terms. In addition, the similarities and differences between the “Reinforcing adjectives” in the two languages in the findings are presented to help learners have better use of language in communication. Finally, suggestions for further research are made for those who are interested in this problem to continue studying so as to perfect this research.