The Analysis Of Semantic Expansion Mechanism To Polysemy Onomatopoeia

Polysemy onomatopoeia occupies a third of the Japanese onomatopoeia. The researchers in this field mainly study the onomatopoeia from phonology, morpheme and syntax, with little attention being paid to the diversity of their meanings. This paper is intended to study the semantic expansion system of the onomatopoeia from the angle of cognitive linguistics.The paper has tried to study four varieties of"goro", they are"gorogoro","goroQ","gorori"and"goroN". The data were from two corpuses—Aozorabunko and Japanese Corpus. The writer has studied the semantic expansion system of these four forms from the aspect of cognitive linguistics by adopting Lokoff's Radial Category(1978). Firstly, the words have been classified according to the introspective method based on the existed research. Secondly, the prototype meaning and the extended meanings have been confirmed. Thirdly, every meaning has been analyzed, and the relationship between these meanings has been stated. At last, the functions of metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche in the procedure of semantic expansion have been explored. Based on the above research, the network of polysemy onomatopoeia has been drawn.Through the exploration of this thesis, the semantic expansion of these four words'has some similarities in three aspects showing as below: firstly, the four words all take the meaning of simulation of thunder which is produced by onomatopoeia as prototype meaning and they share the same direction for semantic expansion, namely the transition from the meaning used as onomatopoeia to the meaning used as approximator. That is expanding from specific and objective use to abstract and subjective use. Secondly, metaphor plays an important role in the four words'semantic expansion from which implies that categorization and metaphor are important cognitive tools for polysemy , the appearance of metaphor is based on the shared property between source domain and target domain as well as that metaphorical thinking provides fundamental rationale for onomatopoeic and polysemy. Thirdly, synecdoche shows little function for the semantic expansion in this thesis's four subjects of study.Metonymy plays an important role in the semantic expansion for the word"gorogoro"but functions nothing in the semantic expansion for other three words."gorogoro"is originally used as onomatopoeia for simulating natural thunder, but actually it is used to refer to the"thunder"a natural phenomenon itself in real life. And in the Aozorabunko and Japanese Corpus, there are some instances that take advantage of time contiguity and indicates the result of movement with its process which also based on the semantic expansion of metonymy.The research of this thesis shows that for Japanese learners, it is very important to not only pay attention to the understanding of sentence meaning from context but also learn more about the basic concepts of system for meaning's interrelationship among polysemy.