Analysis Of Chinese Plant Names Based On Prominence Theory

Plant names are the names that people give to plant entities.Analyzing and exploring the cognitive mechanisms of plant naming can help people grasp the origins of plant names and the meanings they imply.At present,most studies on plant names focus on the lexical level,but less on the cognitive direction.This thesis takes Chinese plant names as the research object,and it takes the 308plant names in Xia Weiying’s《植物名释札记》([zhíwùmínɡshìzhájì]“Notes on Plant Names”)as the corpus.First,this article summarizes the naming patterns of Chinese plant names.According to the number of words in plant names,this thesis divides the plant naming patterns into three types,namely single-category naming patterns,bi-category naming patterns and three-category naming patterns,and then extracts the most common plant naming patterns in all types of naming patterns.Secondly,this thesis summarizes the main prominent factors of Chinese plant names.Finally,based on prominence theory,this thesis try to analyze the metaphorical and metonymic naming methods embodied in the prominent factors in Chinese plant words.The research findings of this thesis are as follows:There are three types of naming patterns of plant naming,namely: single category naming patterns,bi-category naming pattern and three category naming patterns.In single category naming pattern,the most frequent naming patterns are "sensation" and "species".In bi-category naming pattern,"sensation + kind" "species+ kind" are main naming patterns.In three category naming patterns,"species + part +type" and "species + type + type" are the most common naming patterns.The most common 7 types of plant naming patterns are "sensation + species" "species + species" "sensation" "growing environment + species","sensation +sensation" "sensation + part" and "species".The analysis finds that there are 15 most prominent factors in all the 21 plant prominent factors,namely,plant variety,vision,inanimate objects,part,action,animal,growth location,time,efficacy,smell,origin,touch,taste,person,and state.Among them,the most prominent factors are plant variety and vision.By analyzing the prominent factors embodied in the process of naming,this thesis finds that the prominence of plant names mostly appears in the form of metonymy.The metonymy is embodied through the way of "part for whole","whole for part" and "part for part",among which the metonymy of "part for whole" is the most frequent cognition method.There are three main types of metaphors in plant naming: "PLANTS ARE HUMAN" "PLANTS ARE ANIMALS",and "PLANTS ARE INANIMATE OBJECTS".Firstly,this thesis studies plant naming patterns and prominent factors,as well as their metonymic and metaphorical naming methods,which can provide a fresh perspective in the field of plant naming research.Secondly,analyzing the characteristics and naming process of plant naming from a cognitive perspective can help people better understand the meaning of plant names and the origin of plant names,as well as to provide insight into the psychological and cultural background of Han ethnic group.Thirdly,making use of cognitive linguistic knowledge to analyse plant naming can interpret the explanatory power of cognitive linguistics,and broaden the application field of prominent factors.