Animal Metaphorical Words And Its Paraphrase In The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary (Sixth Edition)

Metaphorical words are based on association of similarity, using metaphor to create newwords. Metaphorical words have their distinct characteristics in creating new words, cognitionand understanding, meanwhile they play an important part in Chinese vocabulary. Because ofthe close relationship between this kind of words and rhetoric, For a long time, this kind ofwords are closely related rhetoric, but neither were they researched deeply enough nor paidsufficient attention in the study of Chinese vocabulary. However, metaphor theory ofcognitive liguistics has become something of a hot topic, so this kind of words related to themetaphor has attracted widespread attention. The article mainly focuses on the mostcharacteristic figurative words, that is the new words which are based on animal metaphor,selecting Contemporary Chinese Dictionary (the sixth edition)(hereinafter referred to as the"Xian Han")to count the animal metaphor words, analysis and summarize the classifications,semantic features, functions of animal metaphor words, and explore its ways of paraphrase aswell as its rules. Meanwhile I will try to point out the problems existing in the paraphrase ofanimal metaphorical words in order to enhance people’s awareness level of modern Chineseanimal metaphorical words, and make this kind of words more scientific in the languagedictionary.The article is divided into four parts:The first part, introduction. It contains two sections: in the first section I generalized thestudy origin, research status and the problems of animal figurative words. First of all, in theresearch of the study origin, I discussed from three aspects: metaphor is way of creatingwords in all ethnic groups; metaphor theory of cognitive liguistics; regarding animals as theobjects of metaphor. Detailed introduction from the three aspects can tell us the reason ofchoosing animals figurative words as the research objects in this thesis. With the widespreadapplication of metaphor theory, research on figurative words becomes deepen in academia. Inthese research discussion, I made a general statement of figurative words in six aspects, theyare rhetoric word-making, syntax word-building, language recognization, founction andculture, research on making animals as the analogical body, dictionary paraphrase, I also pointout three problems of current research, they are: the confusion of figurative words and polysemous words which have metaphoric and derivative meanings; the confusion ofmetaphorical words and metonymy words; disagreements in dividing metaphorical words’classification. Based on the research of the predecessors, I presented my opinion on the threequestions that figurative words and polysemous words are extremly different on defining thetypes of metaphorical words. I generalized six different standards in academia, there are somedisagreements of these standards in some classification, I present my own opinion based onthe predesessors’ research. In the second resection, I stated the name and the demarcation ofmetaphorical words, and also the research objects of this thesis. Combining the namingcondition of this kind of words in academia, at the same time according to the simplicity andoperability of the name, these words are called metaphorical words. There are three aspectsthat should be stress in defining metaphorical words, they are: figurative words andpolysemous words should be separated strictly; we could analyse the structure and semanticsalthough metaphorical words are made by metaphor theory, therefore they can be deeplyunderstood; the explanation ways on the paraphrasing are different because of different originand semantics of syntactic types.The second part, quantitative and qualitative analysis of animal figurative words in XianHan. Firstly, there is a research on207animals figurative words in Contemporary ChineseDictionary from two aspects including the position of metaphorical objects and syntacticstructure, and the relationship of the ontology and metaphorical objects; secondly, theseanimals figurative words should be classified into three broad categories and nine smallclasses, according to the position of metaphorical objects and syntactic structure, they canalso be classified into similar form, relevant meaning and combination of both the form andmeaning.The third part, discussion of the semantic characteristics and functions of animalfigurative words. In this part, six semantic characteristics were discussed in detail, they arethe centrality and auxiliary of morpheme, the dual relationship between morpheme meaningand the words’ meaning, various kinds of combination rules of ontology and metaphoricalobjects, multiple feelings in language of metaphorical objects, conventional andnonconventional crossing of morpheme composition, contemporaneity and nationality ofmetaphorical objects. Morpheme meaning is very important for animals pre-figurative words and animals post figurative words，therefore they can be divided into three classes. In thisthesis, I point out my own opinion based on different ideas in academia, particularly “can yi”which belongs to the third kind of words, this word is in the form of modifier-core structures,and the former part of the word is the center of the whole word; dual relationship betweenmorpheme meaning and the words’ meaning shows up in the relationship between implicitand explicit, namely one kind of words show their meaning through morpheme meaning, theother kind show their meaning indirectly through morpheme meaning; one of animalsfigurative words’ semantic features is one object of metaphor can combine with differentontology and one ontology can also combine with different objects of metaphor. Otherwise,there is an interesting phenomenon that animal metaphor morpheme can also be the ontologyand objects of metaphor. Besides the rational meanings of objects of metaphor, there are alsoauxiliary color which includes emotional color and image color, and emotional color includesboth positive and negative meanings, image color can be divided into four kinds according tovisual image, smell image, circumstances and characteristics. Then I expound the origin andinfluences of image color in detail, and the goal of the crossing of morpheme compositionwas achieved by animal figurative words. There are conventional expressions that conform tosemantic relationship and people’s logical thinking, and also nonconventional expressions thatoverreach people’s logical thinking. Animals’ humanity has both contemporaneity and historiccharacteristics.The fourth part studies the animal metaphor word interpretation in Xian Han. Accordingto its structure and the semantic characteristics, the paper summarizes five differentinterpreting ways which are defined type, compound type, alleged type, word type, describedtype. According to before metaphor, metaphor, after metaphor the three types in animalmetaphor words, I’ll give a concrete explanation, and also find out that such wordsinterpretation in the interpreting aspect have two features, that is obvious symbol meaningsand simple interpretations. In the second quarter I come up with several immature opinionsfor animal metaphor so as to share with the readers.