| Polysemy is pervasive in human speech.It is a linguistic phenomenon as well as an economic and effective way in the construal processes of human beings' experience into meaning.Body-Part Words are the most widespread in polysemy.The cognitive semantic study of hand and shou has been catching foreign and domestic researchers,attention for many years.However,previous studies have failed to give a comprehensive comparison of their extended meanings and the cognitive mechanisms of semantic extensions of hand and shou.The thesis aims to study body-part words hand and shou from a cognitive perspective.It adopts linguistic unit concept frame theory,conceptual metaphor theory and conceptual metonymy theory in cognitive linguistics,mainly employing a qualitative analysis and literature induction,and based on dictionaries and corpora to compare the semantic extensions of hand and shou and the cognitive mechanisms of such semantic extensions.This thesis aims to answer the following questions:(1)What are the similarities and differences of body-part words hand and shou in their original meanings and extended meanings?(2)What are the similarities and differences of cognitive mechanisms of semantic extensions of body-part words hand and shou?The findings of the thesis are as follows:(1)The meanings of body-part words hand and shou are closely related.Their original meanings are the same,and the similarities of their extended meanings are more than their differences.(2)The semantic extensions of hand and shou are on the basis of relevant thing concept frame or event concept frame and context.(3)Conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy are the two main cognitive mechanisms of the semantic extensions of body-part words hand and shou.And the number of conceptual metonymies is far more than the number of conceptual metaphors in the semantic extensions of body-part words hand and shou respectively,which further demonstrates that metonymy plays a more basic role than metaphor in the aspect of the semantic extensions of body-part words.(4)The total number of the types of metaphor and metonymy existing in the semantic extensions of hand and shou is almost the same.There are five types of metaphor and six types of metonymy related to hand,and four types of metaphor and seven types of metonymy connected with shou.There exists both similarities and differences in these types of metaphor and metonymy.The theoretical value and practical significance of the study include:(1)the thesis applies three cognitive linguistic theories:linguistic unit concept frame theory,conceptual metaphor theory and conceptual metonymy theory in the explanation of body-part words hand and shou,which further demonstrates that the above three theories have strong explanatory power in the polysemy research of body-part words hand and shou.(2)The thesis is helpful for Chinese and English language learners to have a better understanding of the similarities and differences of their meanings and use the relevant words and expressions effectively.(3)The thesis can be of some reference value for English and Chinese language teaching and culture learning. |
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