The Cognitive Study On The Motivations Of The Names Of Chinese Herbs

Long existed and widely used in daily life, the traditional Chinese medicine constitutes an essential part of Chinese medical science. The names of it, as the result of the cognition of its natural, medical and cultural characteristics, are of non-arbitrarinese. Based on the thesis of Motivations and Cognitive Linguistics, this thesis is going to study the motives of names of traditional Chinese herbs listed on Bencaogangmu, An Outline Treatise of Medical Herbs, so as to reveal the characteristics of the motivations and principles of its cognitive mechanism in nomination.The thesis is going to reveal the motives of the names by analyzing their word formation and semantic structure as the methodology instructed. The motives will be categorized by the combination of motivationemes as well as the word formation, so as to characterize the formation of each motives and discuss the relations and interactions between motives and word formation, monemes, semantemes and cognition and thinking.The thesis is also going to analyze the cognitive mechanism based on the motives of the names. By applying the theories of Categorization and Ideal Cognitive Model (ICM) to the mental representations of the herbs we studied ahead, the thesis will obtain different levels of Categorization in the names of Chinese herbs, and their members of the basic levels especially, as well as four basic models of ICM by analyzing each of them and their interaction in consequence, so as to illuminate the motivations of the names in depth.