The Cognitive Construction Of Polysemous Senses In English And Chinese

Attention has always been paid to polysemy in a universal phenomenon in human language in term of linguistics. Scholars and linguists in different periods hold distinct opinions concerning how the polysemous senses related with each other. However traditional semantic studies such as Saussure's theory on arbitrariness, semantic feature analysis and semantic field theory place more emphasis on the internal system of language and propose that polysemous senses are isolated, which are utterly oblivious of human cognition. In this respect, polysemous study from the perspective of cognitive linguistics can exactly make up the disadvantages of traditional linguistics.Color domain along with time domain, space domain and emotion domain is one of the basic cognitive domains in language. The thesis makes an attempt to construct a cognitive model of polysemous senses grounded on prototype theory and the derivation mechanisms of non-prototypical senses, namely, metaphor and metonymy. Moreover a case study on red, a polysemy with abundant cultural connotations, is invoked to validate the model for the purpose of disclosing the current situation of the cognitive construction of polysemous senses of RED and ?, the similarities and differences in thinking modes between English people and Chinese people beneath the surface and further exploring the essence of polysemy.The thesis collects data from corpus and combines quantitative analysis with qualitative analysis so as to explicate the points that what the similarities and dissimilarities are in terms of the cognitive construction model and how the similarities and dissimilarities reflect the identical and distinct parts of discrete thinking modes.In the light of prototype theory in cognitive linguistics, polysemy is a semantic category that consists of prototype(s) and non-prototypical senses. Polysemy is realized through prototype split and the derivation of non-prototypical senses which is motivated by virtue of cognitive approaches such as metaphor and metonymy. Through the study of RED and ?, the thesis notices that(1) From the analysis of metaphor and metonymy of RED and ?, a conclusion can be drawn that similarity and contiguity lay a cornerstone for the construction of polysemous senses, upon which metaphor, a cross domain mapping and metonymy, an intra-domain mapping, two channels for the derivation of polysemous senses based.(2) In terms of the construction of polysemous senses of RED and ?, the percentage of metaphor of ? is obviously higher than that of metaphor of RED, while in metonymy of RED and ?, both the percentage and classification of metonymy in English outnumber the counterpart, which mainly focus in Constitution ICM, Event ICM together with Category-and-Member ICM.(3) Regardless of the cognitive construction of polysemous senses of RED or ?, metaphor and metonymy are isolated but correlated, furthermore, metaphor is based upon metonymy on the grounds that the salient sub-domain substitute for the entire domain as a reference point, in metonymy, at the meantime, along with the development of human cognition, the salient reference point shares similarities with other domains so as to realize the cross domain mapping from source to target domain.(4) Through the analysis of the cognitive construction of polysemous senses, the thesis holds that the identical physiological and perceptional basis with the same metaphoric and metonymic mechanism leads to the similarities in the cognitive construction, whereas the dissimilarities stem from distinct thinking modes that English people put an emphasis on atomistic thinking, objective reality and logical inference but Chinese people concentrate on holistic thinking, subjective emotion and harmonious man-and-nature relationship. In the end, the thesis advances several suggestions to improve students' ability of acquiring polysemous senses with reference to lexical teaching and thinking pattern for the sake of ameliorating the current situation of lexical teaching.In conclusion, the thesis further explores the construction of polysemous senses through the prototype theory as well as metaphor and metonymy, which is of crucial significance theoretically and practically. Meanwhile the thesis has limitations as well. Further studies should enlarge the research scale; optimize research approaches for the sake of comprehensive theoretical analysis.