A Cognitive Semantic Exploration Of Polysemy And Its Implications For Language Teaching-A Case Study Of "GO"

Based on the framework of cognitive linguistics, this thesis tries to study thepolysemy, with a discussion of typical verb GO and its phrases. This study includes theclassification of the core meaning and derived meanings of both verb GO and its phrases.Then, the writer gets a further study and interpretations of the formation mechanism oftheir derived meanings from the original meaning.All data applied in this thesis are selected through BNC online service. Among all theexamples with verb GO in BNC Simple Search,300cases of GO are selected randomlyfrom the raw data. Finally, there are221cases considered as valid data for further study.All of them are divided into two parts, one is the verb and the other is phrasal verbs. Afterthat, the writer illustrates and analyzes the relation between prototype and image schema ofthe verb GO and the domains its extensions belong to. At last, a diagram of polysemousmeanings of GO is drawn and sound explanations of these extensions derived from theprototype are given by the writer. From this thesis, we can safely say that polysemy is acommon phenomenon in ordinary language and the derived meanings are also on the basisof our daily experience and cognition knowledge queried by metaphor, and image schema.To study polysemous words is instructive and significant for both our English teachersand students as well as the lexicographers and etymologists of their English textbooks anddictionaries.Chapter one is organized as the general introduction of this research, consisting ofsignificance and the aims of the paper. Chapter two is the part of literature review whichconsists of the studies of polysemous words in traditional linguists as well as the studiesconducted by cognitive linguistics. Besides, some researches made by Chinese scholars areintroduced. Chapter three focuses on the methodology of this paper and the theoreticalframework of this thesis. Chapter four is theoretical framework of this paper. Chapter fiveis the main body of this thesis, in this chapter, an analysis of verb GO’s meanings is carriedout, and the specific analysis and discussion will be given on the basis of the data which iscollected from the BNC and the Advanced Oxford American English Dictionary. Firstly,the writer classified and analyzed respectively the core meaning and the derived meaningsof the verb GO. Then, the writer discussed the role of schema and metaphor are playing inthe extension of polysemous meaning of “GO”. At last, the writer studied the phrasal verbsof “GO”. Chapter six is concentrated on the implications for vocabulary teaching and theguidance to dictionary compilers. Chapter seven is the last chapter to conclude this thesis consisting of the main findings and the implications on this issue both on the theories andthe actual teaching,...