An Empirical Study Of The Mechanisms Of Semantic Extension Of Numeral Lexemes In English And Chinese: A Cognitive Approach

Polysemy is a common linguistic phenomenon, which for many years has been drawing foreign and domestic researchers'attention. Numeral is one independent word class in modern Chinese and English vocabulary system with indispensible roles in making up words and sentences. Since polysemy is a common linguistic phenomenon, of course, numerals can generate semantic extension inevitably.But the previous studies about numeral did not concern what is mechanism in numeral and how the mechanism work in numerals. The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary (CCD5 for short) is one of the most far-reaching influences on Chinese lexicographical authority of dictionaries, and also is a product of Chinese theoretical studies and dictionary compilation. Meanwhile, Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary (English edition) is also an authoritative English learning dictionary. We collected 62 and 72 words with numeral lexemes respectively in these two dictionaries, but some are homonymy in these words, in this thesis we just discuss words which generate semantic extension. 26 Chinese numerals and 29 English numerals generate semantic extension; we use categorization (including decategorization and recategorization), grammatical metaphor and grammatical metonymy to analyze how semantic extensions in numeral generate. When analyze the Chinese numerals, we used Modern Chinese Standardized Dictionary (MCSD) (2004) and corpus of Center for Chinese Linguistics Peking University as an aid tool.Through analysis, we found that cognitive mechanisms of semantic extension between English numerals and Chinese numerals are not the same completely, so this can help lexicographer to deal with polysemous lexemes when they compile dictionaries. In addition, it can not only help second language teaching but also help second language learners to understand, master and apply to polysemous words.