A Semantic Study Of Chinese Proverbs

Chinese proverb is an important and special member in modern Chinese idiom system. It is the essence of Chinese language and culture. We took the proverb of "Modern Chinese proverb Standard Dictionary" as the research object, and mostly analyzed the semantic classification and the semantic features of proverbs, as well as their understanding mechanisms of cognitive semantics.According to the double meaning, we divided Chinese proverbs into two categories: combination proverb and metaphor metonymy proverb. Combination proverb can be directly inferred overall meaning by literally components. In other words, its literal meaning is consistent with deep meaning. Metaphor metonymy proverb can’t be correctly and comprehensively understood the overall meaning through the literal meaning of the proverb, and it need to use our some common sense to be understood. In short, its literal meaning is inconsistent with deep meaning.We divided these two categories of proverbs into more detailed classifications. Among them, we especially analyzed semantic type of the overall metaphor proverb. Among them, according to the source of meaning, combination proverb can be divided into combination proverb from the body experience and combination proverb from the social experience. Metaphor metonymy proverb is divided into overall mapping class and part of the mapping class. The former refers to the overall metaphor proverbs. The latter includes part metaphor class, part metonymy class and half metaphor and half metonymy class.Based on the semantic classification of proverb, we summarized the semantic features of various types of Proverb. In general, combination proverb has higher transparency and familiarity and more colloquial words; the semantic features of metaphor metonymy proverb is both metaphorical and figurative, and its semantic transparency is low as a whole. At the same time, the different types of proverb has different motivations.Finally, we studied the semantic cognitive and comprehension mechanism of proverb. We mostly used four types of conceptual integration network to analyze it. We revealed the dynamic meaning construction process of proverb by applying this theory and combining with the proverb case of the dictionary.