A Contrastive Study Of Metaphors And Metonymies Between Chinese And English Monosyllabic Body Terms

Body terms have been studied in many researches, mainly focusing on their cognitivemechanism and system and producing theses from the perspective of metaphor, with a lack ofdetailed description of the process of semantic extension of body terms and comparativeanalysis of metaphor and metonymy. As a continuation of the previous researches, this thesisemploys the theory of metaphor and metonymy in cognitive linguistics and analyzes theprocess of semantic extension of all the body terms, including those monosyllable ones. Inaddition, a comparative study is made for the metaphor and metonymy used in semanticextension between Chinese and English monosyllable body terms, along with the rule of thisprocess concluded.Firstly,25typical monosyllable Chinese body terms for head, trunk, limb, and internalorgan and their English equivalents are chosen as the research objects, whose semanticextension as well as the metaphor and metonymy used are expatiated in a diachronic wayaccording to the dictionary.Secondly, both a qualitative method and a quantitative one are employed in the research.Quantity statistical tables are drawn out for study of the metaphor and metonymy used in thesemantic extension of every body terms in the research, with the purpose to calculate thecategories of each term and the proportion of metaphor and metonymy in semantic extension.Thereby, a comparison is made for metaphor and metonymy in semantic extension betweenChinese and English, with conclusions of the common features shared by Chinese and Englishbody terms and their particular features.Thirdly, metaphor and metonymy used in Chinese and English body terms arecharacterized by the features as follows:1. Body terms for head, trunk, and limb have more extended senses than those forinternal organ in both Chinese and English.2. Position is the key factor that influences the competence of semantic extension ofbody terms, despite the high proportion of interaction and functional characteristics in bothChinese and English body terms.3. Metaphor is often used in Chinese semantic extension while metonymy is employed in English semantic extension more often than not. In addition, metonymy in the semanticextension of most monosyllable English body terms has more categories than that in Chinese.4. The extended senses of monosyllable Chinese body terms mostly refer to position orappearance, resulting in their transition into classifiers; the extended senses of monosyllableEnglish body terms mostly concern interaction and functional characteristics, leading to theirtransition into verbs.5. Monosyllable English body terms have more extended senses than their Chineseequivalents.6. There is a difference in the choice of monosyllable body terms for head, trunk, limb,and internal organ under the impact of the competence of semantic extension betweenChinese and English. All monosyllable Chinese body terms are more concerned with positionthan their English equivalents, apart from body terms for trunk; compared with Chinese,English body terms for head and trunk are less related to appearance, but its body terms forlimb and internal organ are more related to appearance; compared with English, Chinese bodyterms for head and internal organ relate less to interaction and functional characteristics, butits body terms for limb relate more to interaction and functional characteristics.