A Comparative Study Of English And Chinese Polysemes “Head” And “Tou” Based On Prototype Category Theory

Polysemy refers to such words that have more than two meanings,and these meanings which are originated from the basic meaning are extended meanings.They are distinct but related to each other.With the development of society and culture,a lot of thought and culture are updated constantly.When people communicate with others,they always face more and more complicated phenomena.If people coin the new words constantly,it will bring burden to the language users inevitably.If people endow the old words with new meanings to express the updated thought and things,polysemous words will ease their burden and satisfy the demand of the social development.Polysemy is a widespread semantic phenomenon among the whole human languages and is one of the important language phenomena.It is always a research focus for linguistics.The linguists from different schools put forwards different viewpoints.The traditional linguistics only studies the external reasons for the formation of polysemy,while it does not consider the internal reasons.Cognitive linguistics makes a research on polysemy as well.It analyzes the internal relations.Polysemy is on the base of prototype category and extended through metonymy and metaphor.Cognitive linguists reveal the internal reasons for polysemy.Polysemous words have a basic meaning,i.e.prototypical meaning,and with the help of two cognitive mechanisms i.e.metaphor and metonymy,the basic meaning is extended.Basic meaning and extended meanings constitute the polysemous words.Among the studies of polysemy,the human body words are universal and prominent.Human body words are the start to recognize the outside world.The first step to understanding the world is to know ourselves,and people regard human body as the tools to know the outside world.Therefore,the polysemy of human body words is one of the research focuses in the cognitive linguistics.Among the many human body words,head is selected as the object of study in this thesis.Head is one of the most important human body organs.It contains five sense organs.Besides head can make people have the ability to think,cognize and reason.It plays an important role in the daily life.The thesis introduces the different meanings of“Head”and“Tou”respectively,and their meanings come from different dictionaries.The meanings of“Head”are on the base of LONGMAN DICTIONARY OF CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH and OXFORD ADVANCED LEARNER'S DICTIONARY.??????????and????????are the sources of different senses of“Tou”.The thesis conducts a study of polysemous words from a cognitive perspective,and analyzes the formation process and semantic extension mechanism of polysemy through metaphor and metonymy.It aims to make a systematic explanation of the motivation behind the formation of polysemy and demonstrate connections of the related senses of a polysemous word.The thesis also makes a contrastive study between English human body word“Head”and“Tou”to reveal the cognitive rules and cultural differences between Chinese and western people.The thesis consists of three sections to analyze polysemy,including introduction,body part,and conclusion.The first section is the introduction,which mainly introduces the background of research,the significance and objective.Polysemy is a widespread language phenomenon.The linguists from different schools make a study of polysemy.Traditional linguists reveal the external reasons,while cognitive linguists explain the internal mechanisms.Polysemy is analyzed from cognitive angle to reveal the formation rules and internal mechanism,and it will have some implication for English teachers and English learners.The second section is the body part.And it includes three chapters.Chapter one is the literature review,which mainly analyzes polysemy,prototype category theory,the means of meaning extension,i.e.metaphor and metonymy.It lays the theoretical foundation for the thesis.Chapter two mainly makes a comparative study of meanings between “Head” and “Tou”.Firstly the thesis introduces the lexical meanings in dictionaries.There are 21 meanings about “Head”,and there are 13 meanings about “Tou”.On the base of these meanings,the semantic networks of “Head” and “Tou” are introduced.At last,according to the semantic networks,the thesis analyzes the similarities and differences between the semantic network of “Head” and the semantic network of “Tou”.Chapter three makes a comparative study of semantic extensions between “Head” and “Tou”.Firstly the thesis concludes the means of semantic extension on the base of various meanings of “Head” and ”Tou”,then it introduces the process of semantic extensions of “Head” and ”Tou”.Lastly,it analyzes the similarities and differences of semantic extension and the reasons for similarities and differences.Because of cognitive commonality,the similarities are produced and the differences are produced for cultural relativityThe third section is the conclusion,which introduces the whole thesis briefly and expounds the major findings.Cognitive linguistics is a powerful tool to expound polysemy.The prototypical meaning is extended to other extended meanings through cognitive mechanisms,i.e.metaphor and metonymy.The language teachers and language learners can grasp the internal relation of and regularities of the formation of polysemy to reduce the language learners? pressure and burden.It also introduces the implications for language teaching and language learning and the limitations and suggestions for the further study.