A Comparative Study On Semantic Meanings Of “热” And "Hot" From Cognitive Perspectives

With the development of China’s economy, the exchanges between China and foreign countries become more frequent. English has taken root in our daily life. As a result, the study on the semantic meanings of Chinese and English becomes more imperative. English and Chinese are two entirely different languages supported by two different language systems. However, people with different language backgrounds can communicate with each other by learning different languages. All these are based on the truth that "Language is a reflection of the human brain to objective things, and within different languages, the objective things will be expressed differently". There are many similarities between the two languagesIn order to explore the relationship between the semantic meanings of the two languages, the author makes a comparison between the semantic meanings of“热”and "Hot" by analyzing the similarities and the differences. In this way, the author can explore the relationship between the corresponding words in Chinese and English.The author systematically compares the meanings of“热”and "hot" from two perspectives of cognitive linguistics:Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Prototype Theory. Conceptual Metaphor Theory claims:Metaphor is a way of cognition; The essence of metaphor is conceptual; The working mechanism of metaphor is to manipulate categories by means of cross-domain mappings; Mapping adheres to the Invariance Principle; The conceptual metaphor is subconscious. Prototype Theory states:Every kind of mapping is a reflection of the human brain to objective things. The prototype is the center of the mapping structure. The approach used in the thesis is corpus-based. In order to make the thesis more comprehensive, accurate and profound, the research is based on the data from the Center for Chinese Linguistics (CCL) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA).The thesis is composed of four chapters.Chapter One introduces the background, purpose and significance, and overview of the thesis.Chapter Two reviews the related studies on semantic meanings of“热”and "Hot" abroad and at home. Scholars at home and abroad explore the relationship between“热”and "Hot" mainly by the traditional semanteme analysis and the conceptual metaphor analysis. Most of the studies only list the domains without any reason. What’s more, the separation of the domains are simple, not comprehensive enough. Based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Prototype Theory, the author of this thesis aims to make clear the relationship between domains and senses and enrich the separation of domains. The final goal of the thesis is to make a comprehensive, systematic and in-depth comparative study on the semantic meanings of“热”and "Hot".Chapter Three presents a comparative study on the semantic meanings of“热”and "Hot". At the beginning of this chapter, the author projects the senses from dictionaries into different domains. These domains are classified by the use ranges. As a result, the author finds out that the two corresponding words have some same projected domains that can be regarded as the source domains and the target domains. With the help of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, the author compares the conceptual metaphor of every domains and finds that:The metaphorical extensions for "Hot" is wider than those of“热”The expanding metaphorical meanings of“热”in Chinese are quite similar to "Hot" in English both generically and specifically; Every projected domain has their tipical projected domain meaning. Besides, the differences are obvious. And then, with the help of Prototype Theory, the author discusses the corresponding degrees and explains the reasons for different degrees. The author obtains the result that the mapping of “热”has two levels while "hot" has three in the mapping structures; As the center of the mapping structures, the prototype and the prototype meanings of the two corresponding words are same; The distance from the prototype to projected domain decides the corresponding degree.Chapter Four draws a conclusion of the whole thesis. From the comparative study on the semantic meanings of “热” and "Hot", the author analyzes the features for the meaning changes of two languages.Instead of analyzing the semanteme, the author projects the senses from dictionaries into different domains and compares the conceptual metaphor and the corresponding degrees of every domain. And then, the author explains the reasons from the pointview of prototype theory. This thesis, for the first time, proposes a new method to compare the semantic meanings by grading the mappings from the prototype to the projected domain of the corresponding words, which also provides a new idea on semantic study. The analysis of the features for the meaning changes of two languages will be meaningful in the future study of the semantic system.