A Cognitive Linguistic Study On The Sense Extensions Of Chinese Shou

In Chinese,the body-part term shou(hand)appears in formation of compound words with high frequency and has a wide range of sense extension on the basis of its prototypical reference,forming a semantic category of its own.The prominence of the hand as one body part leads to its role as a cognitive reference point in relating new concepts to its basic reference.As a common linguistic phenomenon,polysemy appears as the result of the economy principle of both language and cognition.The sense extensions of a linguistic form are generated via conceptual categorization rather than random correlation.Therefore,revealing the cognitive mechanism behind sense extensions contributes to the systematic acquisition of polysemy.Cognitive linguistics holds that language forms are the reflections of mental activities,and the construction of senses mirrors the structuring of concepts.Therefore,the extensions of sense essentially arise from interactions of different concepts,and in the process of conceptualization,cognitive metaphor and metonymy are the main mechanisms.The present research,on the basis of the lexicalized expressions with shou as a constituting morpheme in Chinese,discusses the senses of shou as a semantic category from the perspective of prototype category,and investigates its semantic extension process from the perspective of cognitive metaphor and metonymy.The findings are as follows: 1)the semantic category of shou consists of 20 senses with its prototypical one included,which is composed of radiational and chainable meaning chains;2)the sense extension of shou is highly dependent on the function features of its prototypical reference as a human body-part,followed by its physical features including position and shape,which is in light of cognitive prominence in human experience,and the senses extended on the basis of function features are in the chainable pattern whereas those extended on the basis of physical features are in theradiational pattern,which reveals the fact that the function features as the most prominent reference point display the greatest potential in conceptual correlation;3)the senses of shou are extended via the mechanisms of mappings in metaphor,metonymy,and metaphtonymy,and among the 19 extended senses,four of them are extended via metaphorical mapping,seven of them are extended via metonymic mapping,and the rest eight senses are extended via metaphtonymic mapping.Metaphtonymy is the most influential mechanism in the extension mappings of shou,and metonymy plays a more fundamental part than metaphor does.As revealed by the research findings,the property of the term shou as being polysemous is essentially a reflection of a cognitive activity,namely prototypical categorization,and its sense extensions are conceptual correlations realized specifically via conceptual metaphor,metonymy and metaphtonymy.Therefore,it is inspirational in enhancing the effectiveness and systematicity in dealing with body-part polysemes with a cognitive approach.