Cognitive Research On Category Vegetable In Modern Chinese

This paper offered a comprehensive cognitive analysis in a single lexical field, vegetable terms in modern Chinese. Our research is based on the theoretical hypothesis of cognitive linguistics that language is not an autonomous system. Language studies should more deeply explore and explain the psychological and social facts in language and the universal semantic laws among them.In Chapter 1, we combined 2 surveys to prove that the VEGETABLES are classified in folk taxonomies rather than in scientific taxonomies. Folk categories are usually structured around prototypical instances, i.e.vegetable instances are gathered in the principle of family resemblances, the attributes are measured differently. Also, the boundary of the category is in fuzziness, which matches the way how people perceive and interact with the world.We believe that the linguistic structure of a folk category is usually a good mirror of our cognition of the category. Therefore, in Chapter 2-4, we will examine how the vegetable terms reflect the conceptualization process.In folk categories, there exists a basic level which is culturally salient and even directly rooted in our biological needs. We found it in category VEGETABLES as well. Moreover, we analyzed other linguistic performances of basic categories, superordinate and subordinate categories. Differences between experiential hierarchies and logical hierarchies were also mentioned in this Chapter.Salience is another phenomenon that cognitive linguists concern. It essentially is a combination of semantics and pragmatics. Lexical salience may be labeled in different types:perspectival, semansiological, onomasiological and structural salience. In Chapter 3, we deeply investigated those related phenomena in VEGETABLES.In Chapter 4, we examined the internal structure of the compounds in vegetable terms from a microscopic point of view. Two types of modifier-head constructions are discovered in vegetable terms which represents different cognitive setups. In the last part, we turn to conceptual metaphors and metonymies in VEGETABLES. We concluded that metaphors and metonymies are basic ways in building vegetable terms and powerful cognitive tools for us in understanding VEGETABLES.In Chapter 5, we summarized the whole paper. Our main point and the significance of the research were mentioned in this part.