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A Study Of Cognitive Meaning In Modern Chinese Monosyllable Adjectives

Posted on:2012-03-24Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y J ZhaoFull Text:PDF
GTID:1115330371965424Subject:Modern Chinese Linguistics
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In this paper, cognitive semantic theories are applied to analyse the meanings of monosyllable adjectives in Modern Chinese from the aspect of metaphorical mapping among conceptual domains and to distinguish and describe the mapping relations between the meaning of the source domain and that of the target domain of the monosyllable adjectives. The necessity of the process of metaphorization among the ambiguity of polysemy has been discussed in literature on cognitive semantics; however, it is argued in this paper that although some scholars have studied from the aspect of measurement on the cognitive meanings of monosyllabic adjectives, there has been little comprehensive or systematic research on the overall metaphorical trend of the meaning development of monosyllable adjectives in Chinese.Chinese monosyllable adjectives are of peculiar characteristics. They retain traits of ancient Chinese and at the same time play the role of multi-syllable adjectives and multi-syllable morphemes in Modern Chinese. The research on Chinese monosyllable adjectives can not only further the studies on the meanings of adjectives but also shed light on studies in the fields of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language and Comparative Linguistics.This paper mainly discusses the following issues so as to describe the metaphorical relations among the meanings of monosyllable adjectives.First of all, the meaning of the source domain of the monosyllable adjectives must be determined in spite of the ambiguous and abstract nature of the adjectives. It is argued in this paper that the determination of the source domain and its meaning is of significant importance. Such determination imposes direct influence not only on demarcating source domain from target domain but also on explaining the meaning of words. Strictly speaking, there can be various results when describing the metaphorical relations among the meanings of monosyllable adjectives. The first achievement of this paper is to try to determinate, for the first time, the meaning of the source domain of the monosyllable adjectives in Modern Chinese as a whole on the basis of researches on the meanings of Chinese monosyllable adjectives in traditional lexical semantics and also to explain the development path among the meanings of source domain and other metaphorical meanings.In this paper, the main standard used to determine the meaning of source domain is body perception that can be found in the philosophical basis of experientialism. The second standard is the basic meanings given in dictionaries, such as Dictionary of Usage of Chinese Adjectives and Modern Chinese Dictionary. The first standard is in preference to the second standard when it is necessary to distinguish the meaning of source domain within the basic meanings of the words. The third standard is to look for the original meanings of the words taking reference of the characteristics of Chinese characters when it fails to find the first standard among the meanings of the words due to the differences between their original meanings and basic meanings. The fourth standard is to take reference of the language intuition of the Chinese native speakers when the judgement of the language intuition is needed.Secondly, the property of the objects that match the meaning of the source domain in the relevant source domain must be confirmed and typical objects must be identified and listed. This is also one of the difficulties encountered in this study. Four objects are identified after three thinking stages. This is in line with the newly emerged theory of semantic fields in vocabulary semantics. The four object semantic fields are as follows.At the first thinking stage, the object of "human being" are separated from the object of "thing" based on peculiar characteristics of human beings, according to the theory that "perceptive expressions of the human being have profound effects on the language". At the second stage, the object of "concept" is set up because both "human being" and "thing" reflect concreteness and abstraction. At the third stage, the object of "event" is established because monosyllable adjectives can be used to accompany not only the human beings and non-human beings but also events.According to the basic principle in cognitive semantics, namely from the concrete to the abstract and from the known to the unknown, four semantic fields are identified in this study in observing the metaphorical mapping relationship among them. Based on the "fussy boundaries" theory of cognitive linguistics, concrete domain with concrete quantity and abstract domain with abstract quantity are established. The four subsumed semantic fields include "thing" semantic field in the concrete domain, "event" semantic field in the concrete domain, "human being" semantic field in the concrete domain, "human being" semantic field in the abstract domain and "concept" semantic field in the abstract domain. It is clear that "human being" semantic field belongs to both of the two domains. The human being is the user of the language and also the main performer in the abstract world and subjective world.The meaning in the source domain and their metaphorical meaning of 162 monosyllable adjectives in Modern Chinese are described and displayed in the way of professional dictionaries. However, in the process of describing the meanings, two extra types are discovered among these adjectives.One type includes the monosyllable adjectives that are against the basic mechanism of the ideas discussed above, e.g. some monosyllabic adjectives are used to express abstract mentality, feelings or personality of the human being instead of the actual parts of the physical body. Separate researches should be carried out to look into such words.The other type includes the monosyllable adjectives that have become morphemes. Some of them could have been listed when their vocabulary meanings were described. It is possible that they had relations with the meaning in the source domain but now refer to something specific after the course of metonymy. It is also possible that the path of metaphor has been lost.Finally, on the basis of the vocabulary meaning description, a comparison is carried out between adjectives in Modern Chinese and their equivalents in Korean. Such comparison will be helpful in exploring the specific cognitive metaphorical meaning of monosyllable adjectives in Modern Chinese and be beneficial to researches on teaching Chinese to Korean native speakers.
Keywords/Search Tags:monosyllable adjective, metaphor, cognitive domain, semantic field, comparison between Chinese and Korean, body idioms metaphor
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