Research On The New Meaning Of Chinese Old Words Based On Dynamic Category Theory

As a special linguistic phenomenon,the old words with new meanings(OWNM)not only reflect the economic principles of language,but also conform to people's cognitive laws,which have aroused the attention of scholars.Traditional linguists study it from the perspective of rhetoric,and believe that the new meaning is produced mainly through two ways — derivation and borrowing.However,do not involve deeper cognitive reasons.Cognitive linguists believe that the new meaning is mainly attributed to human metaphor and metonymy.They use Conceptual Blending Theory,Conceptual Metaphor,Relevance Theory,etc.to explain this phenomenon.Only a few scholars combine the Category Theory with cognitive mechanisms to explore the specific processes and general laws of the change of meaning.From the perspective of cognitive linguistics,this thesis combines Dynamic Category Theory with Cognitive Reference Point to analyze the new meanings of old words in Chinese.We have collected 117 buzzwords from the new century as the research object,using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to find out the cognitive laws behind this phenomenon.First of all,this paper analyzes the four reasons for the emergence of OWNM.The popularity of the Internet has accelerated the spread of old words with new meanings;people's herd mentality and seeking differences have provided the impetus for the emergence of new meanings;the openness of the language system has made the generation of new meanings possible;cognitive mechanisms also play an important role.Secondly,this paper analyzes the features of OWNM from the aspects of pronunciation,part of speech and word meaning.In Chinese OWNM,the two-syllable words are the most,accounting for 65.81%;nouns and verbs are the most prone to new meanings,accounting for 54.70% and 35.90% respectively;most of the new meanings are derived from the pronunciation,writing form and original meaning of the words,accounting for 94.02%Finally,combining with the theoretical framework,this paper explains the cognitive reasons and the processes of OWNM.The essence of meaning change is the dynamic change of the semantic category.People select a prototype as the reference point and by cognitive mechanisms to change the meaning category of the word.Main cognitive mechanisms include metaphor,metonymy and iconicity.We think that the semantic change involves five stages — the initial categorization,the con-categorization,the de-categorization,the trans-categorization and the re-categorization.The results of this paper show that in Chinese OWNM,the category prototype is dynamic.People can choose the pronunciation,the word form or the original meaning of a word as the prototype to generate new meanings.In addition to metaphor and metonymy,iconicity also important.We find that after the dynamic categorization of the words,some words' meaning change from concrete to abstract;from special to general;from objective description to subjective evaluation;from original meaning to its opposite meaning.