A Study On The Meaning Extension Of The Polysemous Word ’(?)’

The Korean language has about500000words. Generally, a word is derived or extended by the most essential and centric meaning to form the polysemous word. That is to say the polysemous word is that a lexical item has more than two related meaning or. sense, and the significant relationship is called polysemy. The study of lexical meaning has a long tradition. Depending upon theoric dependence, it is divided into constructivism and cognitivism.This study aims to explain the meaning extension of the polysemous word ’(?)’. This word recently has obtained’throw’except existing meaning but it seems quite difficult to find a close analogy between new meaning and existing meaning. Therefore I employ the following concepts to explain the process of meaning extension:prototypical meaning, image schema. Cognitive linguistics is so useful to inquire into polysemous word.First, I summarize dictionary definitions and investigate the practical uses through the corpus to define a prototypical meaning of the polysemous word ’(?)’Second, this study tries to demonstrate the process of meaning extension based on the basic concepts of cognitive linguistics:image schema, embodiment.Finally, this study demonstrates that the new meaning of the polysemous word ’(?)’ originated from its prototypical meaning and the embodied experience exerts influence on meaning extension in speech community.