The Cognitive Study On Word-meaning-shift Of Body-head Nouns Between Korean And Chinese

In the early period of understanding the world, human beings firstly cog nize human body and its parts, and then connect their own cognitive experi ence with the universe by analogy, and gradually deepen the understanding of the objective world through consistently learning familiar, specific and cl ose things along with gaining perception of complex, abstract and remote o nes. After conducting an investigation of numerous languages from different countries, Swadesh, an American linguist, concluded 200 relatively core vo cabulary in various human language among which the top 100 are human bo dy words. Therefore, it is of great significance to study human body words. As a matter of fact, such studies from cognitive angles have been emergin g since the 1970s, especially in English. With respects to width and depth, Korean and Chinese studies are far away from English ones though they ha ve made subtle achievements. Currently, Korean and Chinese scholars mainl y focus on the ontological study of the semantics and idiomatic usage of hu man body words. Yet, there exists few contrastive studies and almost no m ulti-perspective and systematic study involving metaphor, metonymy and me taphtonymy theories and other cognitive linguistic theories.From the cognitive perspective, the current research contrastively analy zes the word meaning transfer of six pairs of important human body nouns in Korean and Chinese. In Chapter Three, metaphor, metonymy and metapht onymy theories, image schema, mapping theory and ICM theory are used to specifically analyze the characteristics and the meaning transfer path of th ose nouns. Based on Chapter Three, Chapter Four makes a systematic illust ration of metaphor, metonymy and metaphtonymy of the word meaning trans fer of Korean and Chinese head nouns.The following characteristics are found according to the specific analysi s of the building process of word meaning transfer of Korean and Chinese body-head nouns. 1. In Chinese, body-head nouns such as head, mouth, eyes, face are u sed more frequently. But in Korean among head body nouns, only ’can be used as a quantifier.2. The number of word meaning transfer of Korean and Chinese body-head nouns is different, which is ranked as follows: Moreover, it’s found that two Chinese characteristics sharing the same meaning would be transferred mor e, such as two Chinese characteristics’ ’which share the same mea ning with in Korean. It is mainly because the semantic content borne by the word with two Chinese characteristics is so huge that two Chinese characteristics are used to share different semantic function. One of the cha racteristics is used as quantifier, for example,3. Among Korean and Chinese body-head nouns, the number of meani ng shift of’ and’ is largest because head is a gestalt with a sali ent position and has strong function. Appearance, position and function are the main sensitive points of word meaning shift. Seen from the results of meaning shift of’ and Korean considers position rather than a ppearance and function as the primary point in word meaning shift while C hinese tends to focus on the appearance and function of head to shift wor d meaning.’ are more like gestalts and thus, the appear ance feature of face is usually used to shift word meaning. And ’ in meaning shift is taking on the function characteristics, morph ology and location features. Although Koreans don’t pay much attention to the mouth and eyes, Chinese pay more attention to these two features bec ause they like meaning shift from the two characteristic.’ ’is the le ast transfer among head body nouns. People think little of nose mainly due s to small of it as an organ and the importance of its function.4. Based on statistics, the total number of word meaning shift of six K orean body-head nouns is 45. The proportion of the number of meaning sh ift from appearance is 29%; the proportion of the number of meaning shift from position is 27%; the proportion of the number of meaning shift from f unction is 37%, and the proportion of the number of meaning shift from tw o features is only 7%. In contrast, the total number of Korean head of hu man body words shift is 83; the number of semantic shift from morphology is 28%, the number of semantic shift from position is 28%, the number of semantic shift from function 42%, and the number of semantic shift from t wo characteristics simultaneously is 2%. As is seen by the above data, it c an be concluded that although Korean and Chinese choose different feature s to shift word meaning and the number of word meaning shift is also disti nct, both attach importance to the function of human body nouns and then the respectively salient appearance and position features when shifting wor d meaning.5. The metaphor feature of human head nouns between Korean and Ch inese is mainly represented via following aspects. Human organs project on to field specific things, human organs project onto field of space arid time, and human organs protect onto field of container. However, the metonymi c feature is mainly expressed by these four sides:human organs takes the place of human beings, product, cognition and emotion. Interaction of meta phor and metonymy is mainly reflected in object metaphor including meton ymy, container metaphor, spatial metaphor and other aspects. The interacti on is based on metaphor firstly, such as emotional metaphor, cognitive met aphor, and productive metaphor. Then, a continuous system will be formed by realizing interaction from metaphor to metonymy in the field of metaph or. Metaphor including emotional metonymy is the main way to achieve the metaphor and metonymy. In the light of existing researches, emotion whic h has ignored the fundamental role of metonymy is realized by conceptual metaphor. However, the paper holds that semantic transfer of human nouns refers to emotion, which is the result of interaction of metaphor and meto nymy.