The Study On Word Families Which Signify The Names Of Chinese Zodiacs

The zodiac is Chinese precious cultural products, twelve animals are the closest animals and to our daily life and social life, so they become the most familiar cultural symbols to people. Animal words is a marker of animals, most of the Previous studies are limited to differences between Foreign culture and Chinese cultural and cross-cultural communication and translation, the achievements view has not appeared from aspects of modern Chinese vocabulary system research.Based on the twelve zodiac animals, we choose a relatively isolated word group which signify the zodiac animals'name as our Research object, investigate the aspects of animal words within this range systematically, explore the relevant laws of research on animal words and Chinese vocabulary system. This dissertation bases on the summarizing of the experience of the previous research and using the achievement of the previous studies, combining the following methods including the quantitative and qualitative analysis, diachronic and synchronic analysis, the static and dynamic analysis, comparing analysis methods, study the word group which signify the zodiac animals'name thoroughly.The word group of zodiac animals composed by the twelve words which are "rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, pig," whose meaning system does not present without order, but formed around the center of a rule-based semantic network, it has distinctive type features. As the basic Chinese vocabulary of modern Chinese vocabulary system, most of the zodiac animals word has a strong ability of word-formation after a long process of development, they derivatives quantities of animals words whose meaning are related to them by the different ways of the description, analogy method and substitution method, those animals words form a certain scale of twelve word groups with the same morphemes, On one hand, all the words in every word groups reflect the word-creation situation of zodiac animals, On the other hand, they add the semantic system of zodiac animals word in a certain extent.Survey the zodiac animals words from the perspective of cognitive, we can find the relation of each Polysemy node which reveals the basic cognitive style are metaphor and metonymy.In cross-language comparison, we have seen in Chinese and English the meaning similarity of zodiac animals words is inseparable from the same cognitive basis of humanity, and different perceptions are based on different cultural backgrounds, and this enables us to recognize the cultural connotation of zodiac animals word groups...