A Study On Plant Names In Lisu

Nouns derived from plant names share common features of other nouns developedfrom tangible materials. They also have their own unique features such as cultural aswell as cognitive value. Therefore, it has its own research value not only in the areasof sociolinguistics, cultural-linguistics, but also in anthropological linguistics. Themost representational work of the area is La mentalité primitive or Primitive Mentalityby French anthropologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl. Due to economic, historical factors aswell as suffering from wars，the Lisu people lived a life of gathering and hunting for ahistorical long period of time. Their rugged and natural life style enabled them with anacute vision to observe and distinguish the natural environment they lived with. Thisis particularly true when distinguishing various plants and animals which enrich thevariety of Lisu lexicon with diverse extended meanings on the one hand reflecting theview toward the world and ecology of the Lisu people; on the other hand, it alsoreflects the outstanding capability of language use, associating environment andgeneralization of the Lisu people. Since the study involves many comparatively broadareas, the thesis includes contents as follows: firstly, we will review previous studiesthat relates to this study including that of Lisu language, language, religion, culture,word formation, the basis of word formation, as well as studies on plant names andrhetoric and so on; secondly, we will analyze and generalize the ways of forming Lisuplant names; thirdly, through sememe analysis, the study will generalize the sememeformation feature of the Lisu plant names, basis of word formation, the relation andthe perspective between temporary and registered sememes; finally, under the visionof broad rhetoric, the thesis attempts to undercover the symbolic as well asconnotative features of Lisu plant names in the Lisu folk lore. On other words, basedon viewpoints of other areas such as rhetoric, literature, folklore, anthropology and soon, through analyzing the Lisu pant names lexically, semantically and grammatically,the author attempts to explore the Lisu people’s cognitive rules and rhetoric deductionof the objective world as well as the instructive function of plant names in the Lisupeople’s life.