A Contrastive Study Of "Look" And "Kan"

People pick up visual verbs to express abstract concepts such as thinking, mentalstates etc. So far, a great number of research on visual verbs has been conducted bothat home and abroad. However, there are few studies on mechanisms of meaningextension of visual verbs in a cross-language context.Both “Look” and “Kan” are the most frequently and widely used visual verbs indaily communication. This thesis investigates visual verbs “Look” and “Kan” inEnglish and Chinese and makes a comparative analysis of meaning extension ofthese two words.By consulting authoritative English dictionaries and Chinese dictionaries, theauthor classifies the meanings of “Look” and “Kan”. After the analysis of theirmeaning extension processes, the author comes to the following conclusions:1.“Look” and “Kan” share similar meaning extension mechanisms. Many othersenses of “Look” and “Kan” are gradually extended with the aid of metaphor andmetonymy and the co-working of metaphorical mechanism and metonymicmechanism.‘to think’‘to listen’‘to warn or remind’ shared by “Look” and “Kan” areextended with the aid of metaphor. The meaning of “Look” and “Kan” is extended tomean ‘to look after, to take care of’ through metonymic mechanism.2. There are also differences in meaning extension mechanisms of “Look” and“Kan”.“Look” is extended to mean ‘to expect’ with the aid of metaphor.‘to face’‘toassess’ are extended from “Look” with the co-working of metaphorical mechanismand metonymic mechanism.‘to read’‘to pay a visit to’‘to cure’ are extended fromthe original meaning of “Kan” with the aid of metonymic mechanism.“Kan” isextended to mean ‘to select’ by metaphorical mechanism.3. The other senses of “Look” and “Kan” extended by metaphorical mechanismare more than those extended by metonymic mechanism.The study is of great significance in practice, especially in the areas of vocabulary learning and dictionary compiling. Although there are still limitations inthe study, experimental research will be conducted to provide evidence for thecurrent study in the future.