A Study On The Meaning System Of Body Terms

Language is the language of words, upon which other units are based. The core of the language is the meaning. Without the study on the lexical meaning, one cannot grasp a word. This research focuses on the meaning system of body terms, regarded as the most basic concept for human cognition to the world, so as to discover the semantic features and their construction rules of the whole language lexical system, as well as to contribute supplements to semantics, and to offer interpretation for lexical meaning.Based on the theories and research results of lexicology, semantics, cognitive linguistics and psychology, this research explores the meaning system of body terms from different perspectives and levels by adopting the following methods: comparison, combination of description and explanation, combination of aspects and full-scale analyses, combination of qualitative and quantitative analyses. Firstly, from the macro perspective we examine the semantic features of the whole body terms by making comparison with other nouns. Secondly, from the micro perspective we make detailed analyses of the meaning systems of two words"Shou"("Hand") and"Yan"("eye"), in order to better the research in systematization. Thirdly, from the cross-language perspective, we make a comparative study on the Chinese and English body terms'meaning systems, again for the systematization of our research. Finally, we supply a meticulous interpretation for the construction of the body terms'meaning system. From different perspectives, we get different findings and rules, which constitute the verdicts of our research, and the following are some of them.1,Apart from the objectivity, variability, polysemy and cultural specificity, the semantic features shared by body terms and other nouns, body terms owns its unique semantic features, viz systematically metaphorical and metonymical properties. The systematically metaphorical property embodies the body-part related metaphors built systematically by focusing on an outside object, and by foculizing a particular body part. The Metonymical property manifests itself in the extension of the nominatum of body terms to the person, to the unit of measurement, to the physical features or functions possessed by body parts, and to the action of body parts. 2,The transferred meanings of body terms are extensions from the physical and functional features of body parts, but the two kinds of extensions are not balanced. For different terms it varies accordingly."Hand"lays particular stress on the functional features, while"Eye"on the other. This kind of tendency also influences the semantic categories of the transferred meanings. Four semantic categories, namely thought-emotion category, body component category, time category, and attribute category, are the defaulters for transferred meanings of both words ("Hand"and"Eye"). This, from our point of view, can be thought as a result of their being the essential exterior body parts, of their being apperceived as tools for actions, and of being their perceptual unsalience in positions. The transferred meanings of"Hand"have a strong tendency of semantic image exaction from its functions. A sole semantic image exaction from its functions can be seen. This is brought about by people's cognitive psychology of considering the hand being as a prototype of the tool. The transferred meanings of"Eye"have a tendency of semantic image exaction from its appearance. Besides, there still exist some transferred meanings from its functions. This is because of the eye, as an important visual organ, also coming into people's notice.3,The phenomenon of different appellations for a particular body part is caused by historically excessive polysemy of one word. Based on the same organ, both"Yan"and"Mu"develop transferred meanings from the eye's appearance and functions, and the semantic categories of their transferred meanings occupied are much similar to each other. However, each of the two words has its own role in developing transferred meanings, otherwise one of them will be dropped out of the language system.4,For Chinese and English body terms, the quantities and contents of their transferred meanings share some common traits on the one hand, and on the other hand they have their own characteristics.The common traits of the quantities of their transferred meanings include the following aspects: the quantities of the transferred meanings of body terms decrease successively from the terms of the head to the terms of the trunk, and then to those of the viscera; Owing to their cognitive properties and cognitive superiority,"Xin"and"Heart", members of the terms of the viscera, and"Ti"and"Back", members of the terms of the trunk, possess high quantities of transferred meanings. The characteristics of the quantities of their transferred meanings are: there are more transferred meanings in English, and also more in English which have shifted into verbs; by contrast, there are more transferred meanings in Chinese which have changed into classifiers.The common traits of the contents of their transferred meanings involve the following:the quantities of the metaphorical meanings from the positions of body parts lower successively from the terms of the head to the terms of the trunk, and then to those of the viscera;among the metaphorical meanings from the appearances of body parts, many are developed from the terms of the head,while very few from the terms of the viscera; it also forms an opposite feature between the metaphorical meanings from the positions and those from the appearances, that is, body parts with salient appearances bring their corresponding terms lots of metaphorical meanings from the appearances, while a few or even none from the positions, and vice versa; there exist a great deal of meanings from the functions of body parts, thanking for the contribution of the terms whose corresponding body parts with prominent functions, and also for the generosity of the terms of the viscera in meaning offering in thought and emotion. The characteristics of the contents of their transferred meanings are: more English terms have the metaphorical meanings from the appearances and also more from the positions, and the averages, i.e. the quantities per term, of these two kinds of meanings in English are also higher than those in Chinese; while slightly more Chinese terms possess the metaphorical meanings from the functions, and also the average is a little bit higher; influenced by the cultural factors, the meanings from the appearances, from the positions, and from the functions of English body terms differ from those of Chinese body terms in some degree.5,For the construction of the meaning systems of body terms there exist two sorts of bases: one the experiential bases, and the other the bases for the semantic category crossing. The experiential bases consist of the bodily experiences and the cultural models, forming a relatively fixed mental structure of the cognitive subject called as the cognitive frame. The three factors (the bodily experiences, the cultural models, and the cognitive frame) are fundamental for meaning construction. The bases for the semantic category crossing include two: one, objectively, human and things being of a kind, and the other, subjectively, the cognitive subject's striving- for-novelty psychology. The mechanism of the construction of the meaning systems of body terms is disinterred detailed as what described below: the similarity and the contiguity act as the cornerstone, the cognitive salience on the potential similarity and the contiguity perform as the promoter, and metaphor and metonymy behave as the two paths by mapping between domains in metaphor or transferring in one domain in metonymy separately via several methods, and finally the new meanings, thereby get constructed.