Things And Symbols

Name is the lingual identity of an object. Also it is the fundamental condition for human beings to communicate on the same things. Man's unique and superior natures presuppose that he will do so out of the need for survival in this world. We can safely say that the creation of names, words or symbols, is one of the basic needs of man. Therefore, the research on naming lasts for many years in the field of anthropological linguistics or some other fielas concerned. The symbolic process is the naming process. Generally speaking, the naming rules make no difference, though the languages vary from one country to another. However, the symbolization process and naming motivation are by no means a uniform process for all mankind. It is universally admitted that name is nothing but a symbol, which man uses to stand for things and animals. But between words and things or animals there may not be any necessary connections, innate or institutional, any traditional rules to tie them up. Names are just symbols, arbitrarily invented and adopted by man for the convenience of expression and communication. There are altogether over 5000 languages all over the world with their distinct systems. And their historical courses, cultural backgrounds and cognitive processes present many differences, which have drawn a lot of scholars' attention.This thesis is designed to make a research on naming process from the perspectives of symbolism, cognition and culture systematically. Further, it tries to tell the differences between Chinese and English naming systems. And by sketching out the rules of naming, it finally reaches a conclusion that the study of naming process, culture and cognition are inseparable.The first chapter, by giving a brief introduction to the origin, definition and classification of names and making a general survey of construction and function of scientific names and common names, makes it clear that the core of this thesis is to study the common names which are able to illustrate the differences of culture and cognition between languages. In the second chapter, judging from the theory of...