At 3 pm on September 13, 2018, college of foreign Languages held a lecture entitled "The Category of Definiteness is the Category of Cognitive ". The speaker was Professor Liu Zhengguang, dean of the School of Foreign Languages Hunan University. Professor Liu has got a doctor degree of Beijing Foreign Studies University, a postdoctoral candidate of Shanghai International Studies University (outstanding), he was an expert who enjoy special allowances from the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, an outstanding talent of the Ministry of Education in the new century,thedirector of the Hunan Foreign Language and Literature Professional Teaching Steering Committee,theleader of Hunan Provincial Higher Education, the director of the Hunan Foreign Language and Literature Professional Teaching Steering Committee, and the leader of Hunan Provincial Higher Education, the vice President of the Chinese Cognitive Linguistics Research Association, the vice President of Hunan Translation Association, and the chief expert of Hunan Language and Cognition Research Base. The lecture was hosted by Vice President Jiang Ling. There were some other gusts, they are some teachers, graduate students, doctorial students,all of them from College of Foreign Languages Henan University.
In this lecture, Professor Liu pointed out that definiteness is a classical question in linguistic research and has the common characteristics in the sense of typology. There are some basic problems which difficult to explain in grammatical category and semantic pragmatic category. In order to interpret the category of definiteness more clearly,Professor Liu divided his lecture into six parts, they are: the dislocation of definiteness in psychological representation and formal function, cognitive framework and association usage, three Interpretations of English bare NPs, the neutralization of the definite and indefinite of the ordinary noun phrases, the neutralization of the definite and indefinite of the proper noun phrases, the neutralization of grammar markers. Furthermore, he noticed thatdefiniteness effect is a kind of state of information and cognition, definiteness effect can be eliminated under the subjective effect, if we consider definiteness as cognition category, most of problems can be saved.
Finally, according to the questions about the content of the lectures and academic confusion from the on-site teachers and students, professor Liu given clearly answer one by one which leaded to very warm atmosphere.
This lecture successfully leaded students to appreciate the charm of cognitive linguistics, deepen the understanding of qualitative categories and provided academic support for students’ scientific research, all of these won theadmiration and alikeofteachers and studentsgreatly.(Author: XiaJie)
