Modern Chinese Polysemous Word Meaning Extended Cognitive Research

The research on Polysemy has been the focus of many domestic and abroad academies. One word has two or more meanings is a phenomenon that exists in nearly all languages, as well as an important part of modern semantics. The different branches of the cognitive semantics have made different explanations on Polysemy and the extension of meanings. In China, the Xungu experts of Qianjia Period in Qing Dynasty observed and studied detailed the extension of meanings in Ancient Chinese, and left down abundant of relevant language materials. Based on these, the later scholars kept on exploring theories, and made the understanding of the extension of meanings deep more and more. However, people's understanding of things can not reach the final line. Continuously newly generated theories provide us with new perspective to look on a thing. How to fully explain from cognitive perspective the way the modern Chinese Polysemy to achieve its extended meanings? or rather, how to use cognitive theory modern to explain the relationship between the original meaning (or basic meaning) and its extended meanings of Chinese Polysemy? Facing of vigorous development of TCSL education, are our studies on Polysemy of modern Chinese able to answer the following series of questions:Can Chinese word meaning extension methods influence Chinese learners'meaning-guess abilities? What effects? What is the relationship between literal extension laws of Chinese Polysemy and the efficiency of acquisition? How to effectively describe and explain the law of extended meaning in TCSL teaching materials and teaching practice? How to teach Polysemy in TCSL under the guidance of the laws of extension? These problems have not yet been in-depth academic study and gained a broad consensus. This article tries to solve these issues.This dissertation is mainly made up of three parts including the introduction, the body and the conclusion. The body part has six chap-t ers. Chapter One to Chapter Three is the basic study, While Chapter four is the transition chapter, Chapter Five and Chapter Six belongs to the pragmatic study.The introduction gives a brief view of the studies on Polysemy and the extension of the literal both at home and abroad, represents the aims, values and means of this study, and introduces the related cognitive linguistic theories.The first chapter defines several groups of basic concepts, introduces different cognitive opinions on Polysemy, and discusses the regularity and randomness of polysemous words inside one language and the commonness and individuality of polysemous words in different languages.ChapterⅡfirst summarizes the traditional classification of litral extension. Then based on the illumination of the theories of cognitive linguistics, and detailed analysis on the relationship between the original meaning and the extended meanings in Modern Chinese, this chapter generalizes four cognitive measures to the realization of extended meaning of Polysemy in Modern Chinese:transfer, substitution, salience, and blending. According to these four cognitive measures, the extension of Polysemy in Modern Chinese can be classified into four types: transferring extension, substitutional extension, salient extension, and blending extension.ChapterⅢseparately describes the extension rules of polysemous verbs, polysemous adjectives, polysemous nouns in Modern Chinese, including the extension of verb-to-verb, verb-to-adjective, verb-to-noun, adjective-to-adjective, adjective-to-verb, adjective-to-noun, noun-to-noun, noun-to-verb, and noun-to-adjective.As a transition chapter of basic research to applied research, Chapter IV puts forward the concept of Item Networks and the construction of Item Networks Schema, inspired by some semantic networks models in the field of psychology and cognitive linguistics.Chapter V is a part of empirical study. Firstly we made an investigation and analysis on how the extensive rules of a polysemous word influences the abilities of Chinese learners to guess word meaning in the specific context. Forty-four foreign students from Chinese Department Training Center in Beijing Foreign Study University accepted our questionnaire survey. An conclusion is drew on the data-analysis that whether the Chinese learner knows the rules of the extension of the the litral influenced their meaning-guess a lot——the more rules they know, the higher score they get. Statistics also found some major factors that impact upon students'meaning-guess-ability in the specific context, that is, how well they know about the relations between different meaning items of one word, their mother culture background, their Chinese level, and how close the relationship is between the original meaning and the extended meaning. Secondly we made an investigation on the handling on polysemous words of several kinds of Chinese textbooks, and found that none of them separately notes on the treatment of Polysemy or points out the important role of Polysemy in Chinese learning and teaching. This reflects that the current TCSL failed to generate enough attention on the Polysemy teaching.Based on recalling the methods of explaining word meaning in TCSL (Teaching Chinese as a Second Language), Chapter VI puts forward a polysemous teaching model——Item Networks Teaching Model, elaborates its psychological and educational bases, and gives the details of the specific steps in teaching, taking "包"as an example.The conclusion part summarizes the present study, pointing out both the value of this study and existed problems for further research.