| Metonymy words are a special type of words in the system of Chinese vocabulary. Some scholars have explored this linguistic phenomenon. But generally speaking, there exists no systematic analysis and description of many aspects of Metonymy words. The dissertation, based upon previous scholarships, making use of theories of rhetoric, lexis, and concepts related to various other disciplines such as lexicology, syntax, cognitive linguistics and cultural linguistics, aims to make a systematic study and detailed description of acceptation character, structural relationship, aggregation type of monosemic Metonymy words, paraphrase character in The Chinese Dictionary so as to expand the academic field of Metonymy words.The dissertation consists of seven parts.The introduction proposes the necessity of studying Metonymy words from four aspects and the methodology of this study.Chapter One "A General Survey of Metonymy Words". Based upon a bibliographical review of the research of Metonymy words, it explicates Metonymy words through distinguishing them from other three linguistic phenomena such as Metonymy rhetoric, Synecdoche words and Metonymy acceptation and explicates the nature of Metonymy words, which can be defined as being produced by Metonymy and embodying Metonymy in morpheme and morpheme combination. In light of the acceptation condition of The Chinese Dictionary, this dissertation takes monosemic Metonymy words as its main object of study so as to reflect the general condition of Metonymy words in The Chinese Dictionary and avoid over-expanding other linguistic phenomena into the present study.Chapter Two "The Acceptation Study of monosemic Metonymy Words" analyzes the different expression of the indirectness of the logical meaning of monosemic Metonymy words and the rich variety of additive meaning. The indirectness of the logical meaning of Metonymy words includes the following three aspects: the extent of indirectness of acceptation caused by the metonymic function of morpheme, the mono-layer or multilevel of metonymic relationship, and single or multiple use of rhetoric. The additive meaning of monosemic Metonymy words can be divided into six types: image color, stylistic color, emotional color, dialect color, national color, and color of times, among which image color and national cultural color are relatively prominent ones with its obvious metonymic nature. The combination between logical meaning and various color meaning greatly enhanced the expressive power of Chinese Metonymy words.Chapter Three "A Study of the Structural Relationship of monosemic Metonymy Words". Metonymy words can be studied either of the forms of its production from the perspective of morphology or of their structural relationship from the angle of word-formation. This chapter focuses on monosemic Metonymy words through the perspective of word-formation. First, it divides monosemic Metonymy words into metonymic word and metonymic language, and then discusses their structural relationship.The variety of Metonymy words' structures has been perfect after diachronic accumulation and development. According to differences of structural relationships, they can be divided into seven types: combined, secondary-primary, dominative, statement, complementary, successive, double-speech, among these each can be further divided into different types according to part of speech. Analysis shows that secondary-primary Metonymy words are a predominant category, and followed by combined, dominative, statement, complementary, successive, double speech. If examined by part of speech, most of Metonymy words are nouns; and there are also lots of verbs. In addition, this study has discovered a small number of adjective Metonymy words, which altered the traditional idea that most of Metonymy words are nouns, only a few verbs and no adjectives.Metonymy language includes metonymic idioms and metonymic phrases. In terms of their grammatical structure, metonymic idioms can be divided into six types: combined, secondary-primary, dominative, subject-predicate, statement-complimentary, and double speech. Different from Metonymy words, the primary forms of metonymic idioms are combined, and then secondary-primary forms. Judged from grammar, most of metonymic idioms are verbs, which attest the existence of a large number of verb metonymies. Previous studies were only concerned with Metonymy words, which explain why they concluded that most of Metonymy words are nouns.Most scholars think that phrases came into being through metaphors, which is proved as a one-sided view by the existence of metonymic phrases. The structure of metonymic phrases is relatively simple, with verb-object as its predominant form, and with subject-object, secondary-primary as minor forms. Therefore there are more verb metonymic phrases and less noun ones.Chapter Four "A Paradigm Study of monosemic Metonymy Words". There exists a discernible relationship among monosemic Metonymy words. According to their meaning, form, morpheme and other factors, Metonymy words can be divided into three paradigms: synonymy paradigm, same-morpheme-contrary-order paradigm, same-morpheme paradigm. The paradigmatic relationship reveals the systemic nature of Metonymy words.There exist a large number of monosemic synonymy Metonymy words. First of all, the dissertation divides the paradigm of monosemic Metonymy words into thirty-four categories according to their different logical meanings, briefly introducing and illustrating twenty-four important categories so as to attest the existence of the paradigm of synonymy Metonymy words and the applicable scope of synonymy Metonymy words. Then it explores the originating source of the paradigm of synonymy Metonymy words from social, cognitive and linguistic perspectives. The complexity and variety of the relationship between the metonymic and the object provides the objective conditions for the emergence of the paradigm of synonymy Metonymy words, which can produce Metonymy only when they are understood and stored in human mind as the cognitive framework. However, the social conditions and cognitive framework are not enough for the production of the paradigm of synonymy Metonymy words. It is only when they meet the different needs of linguistic expression, such as parallel, stress, rhyme, collocation, color meaning, expressive ways, occasions and etc.; they can be established as words.Same-morpheme-contrary-order words refer to a pair of disyllable whose morphemes are the same yet with contrary morpheme order. In fact, there exist some same-morpheme-contrary-order words, which are seldom touched by previous scholarships. The present study explores the same-morpheme-contrary-order Metonymy words from several aspects such as acceptation, grammatical structure, part of speech, rhetoric, times and others. In terms of acceptation, the same-morpheme-contrary-order Metonymy words can be divided into three types: those with same meanings, those with only one same meaning, and those with totally different meanings, with the first group as predominant. Judged from grammatical structure, they are mostly parataxis, with some dominative and subject-predicate as one group, some secondary-primary and subject-predicate combined as one group, and others as complementary and secondary-primary combined. Seen from the perspective of part of speech, they can be divided into three categories according to their numbers: all nouns within the group, all verbs within the group, nouns and verbs within the group. The same-morpheme-contrary-order synonymy Metonymy words appear most frequently in ancient poetry and other verses, playing an important rhetoric role in arranging rhyme patterns, adjusting stresses and parallels. In terms of the distribution of ages, they might appear in the same age or in similar ages; or one might appear relatively earlier and another relatively late, with the former kept and handed down by generations, the latter gradually disappeared along with the changes of language.Lots of Metonymy words based upon the same morpheme metonymic acceptation form the paradigm of the same-morpheme Metonymy words, which is related to seventeen fields and approximately over thirty types of Metonymy words.There are about 120 metonymic morphemes, with each morpheme containing at least two Metonymy words with the same morpheme, which constitute various paradigms of same-morpheme Metonymy words. The analysis shows that the numbers of same-morpheme Metonymy words' members depend on the relevancy between the metonymic and the object and the use of metonymic morphemes. More intimate the relationship between the metonymic and the object, and more frequent the use of metonymic morphemes, there would produce more Metonymy words. The paradigm of same-morpheme metonymic words promotes the production and stability of morpheme-metonymic acceptation.Chapter Five "A Study of Acceptation of monosemic Metonymy Words in The Chinese Dictionary." It makes a detailed analysis of ways of acceptation, paraphrase terms, and quotation of monosemic Metonymy words in The Chinese Dictionary and points out some demerits of its paraphrase.The Chinese Dictionary mainly uses seven ways to explain monosemic Metonymy words. Synonymy paraphrase is the most frequently used means, which reflects Metonymy of words through some non-vocabulary factors such as related vocabulary entry, common sense of life, quotation, related morpheme paraphrase, and others. Synonymy + acceptation aims to provide further explanation based on synonymy immediate paraphrase so as to avoid the ambiguity of paraphrase and acceptation. Variant words are a brief way to paraphrase. The Chinese Dictionary usually explains the formal or accepted forms of Metonymy words as main entries in detail, making the variant words as a supplementary entry and explains the supplementary entry through the main entry, which can be applied to a relatively limited scope. The main object of paraphrase Metonymy words is those words in which part of their morphemes plays the metonymic role and foregrounds their metonymic nature. Motivation plus acceptation introduces the reason why the word gets its name. It can be applied to the following: Metonymy words originating from literary quotation, Metonymy words whose acceptation cannot embody their metonymic nature or the reason why they get their names, Metonymy words whose single morpheme functions, having fixed acceptation and with difficulties to ascertain their metonymic nature. Literal meaning + acceptation is suitable for integrated Metonymy words. It is an ideal way for paraphrase since the relationship between the metonymic and the object can be better understood relying on literal meaning. Acceptation + componential meaning/use is mainly used for explaining the morphemes functioning as Metonymy, whose illustrating examples still left not unified. The part of paraphrase terms mainly discusses the types of paraphrasing terms of monosemic Metonymy words and misuses of terms in The Chinese Dictionary. The Chinese Dictionary primarily uses eight kinds of paraphrase terms, most of them can serve as hints in noting the color meaning of Metonymy words, metonymic nature or embodying the organic relationship between relevant entries. But due to the lack of a definite regulation about the limits of using those terms and the unclear boundary between metaphor and Metonymy, there occurred many misuses of terminological notes of Metonymy words in The Chinese Dictionary. Metonymy words should have a system of paraphrase terms of their own nature as metaphor words do.The citation part, after a brief introduction of testing acceptation and complementing explanation text through citation, focuses on problems such as the incompleteness of citation, the inconsistency between citation and entry, the intercrossing of citation of different entries, lack of citation, citation as literal meaning and others. The Chinese Dictionary should have made every effort to choose the typical citation which best exemplifies the metonymic nature of words and establish the consistency between entry, explanation text and citation through detailed verification."Conclusion" summarizes the main contents of the study, explains some ideas for arranging the framework of the dissertation and finally proposes some possible alternatives for further studies.
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