A Corpus-Based Study On The Lexicalization Patterns Of SMILE Concept In English And Chinese

Smile is a facial expression denoting happiness,joy,amusement or sociability.In different languages,SMILE concept is expressed by various words with slightly different meanings.For instance,English has a bunch of smile words including smirk,sneer,grin,chuckle,and Chinese conveys the SMILE concept with the following words such as weixiao微笑,shaxiao傻笑,shanxiao讪笑,xixiao嬉笑.Although these words share the general conceptual meaning of smile,their specific semantic components are distinct from each other.Guided by Talmy’s theory of lexicalization,this thesis focuses on the lexicalization pattern of SMILE in English and Chinese.Specifically,SMILE concept is investigated via the analysis of the relations between the forms and meanings of the smile words.Firstly,13 English smile words and 32 Chinese smile words are selected from dictionaries and thesauruses as the objects for research,and then 100 sampling concordances for each smile word are extracted from the Corpus of Contemporary American English(COCA)and the Chinese BCC Corpus respectively.Then,those smile words are manually annotated in two semantic dimensions,namely the manner of smiles and the attitudes expressed by smiles.The annotations are the feed of cluster analysis,which is used to categorize smile words in groups with the aid of SPSS.Words in the same cluster are of high similarity in terms of the above two semantic dimensions.Subsequently,the thesis further analyzes the detailed semantic components of each smile word on the basis of its collocates in the concordances to figure out the subtle differences among words of the same group.Finally,taking the approach of onomasiology,the thesis presents the naming process of SMILE concept,aiming to uncover the underlying connection among concept,semantic meaning and surface expression established in the process of lexicalization.For the English part,it is found that firstly English smile words can be categorized into four groups as(1)voiced smile with positive attitudes,(2)voiced smile with negative attitudes,(3)unvoiced smile with positive attitudes,and(4)unvoiced smile with negative attitudes respectively.Secondly,it is also found that English smile words are lexicalized in a pattern of “smile + manner(sound and appearance)+ attitude(cause and purpose)+ X(other semantic components like agent and patient)”.Thirdly,onomasiological account of English smile word’s lexicalization illustrates that smile concepts can be named in three ways:(1)an already existing word is used if the concept is considered as something familiar and is classified as a member of an existing category;(2)a borrowing or a shortened form of an existing word if the concept is unfamiliar.The designation is based on speaker’s overall image of the concept;(3)a new form for the unfamiliar concept based on its salient features.For the Chinese part,it is found that firstly smile words can be categorized into five groups as(1)unvoiced smile with positive attitudes,(2)unvoiced smile with neutral attitudes,(3)voiced smile with negative attitudes,(4)voiced smile with positive attitudes,and(5)unvoiced smile with negative attitudes.Secondly,it is also found that Chinese smile words are lexicalized in the same pattern of “smile + manner(sound and appearance)+ attitude(cause or purpose)+ X(other semantic components like agent and patient)” as English ones.However,smile words in the two languages exhibit different characteristics in the conflation of specific semantic components,which is summarized in the next paragraph.Thirdly,a fourth method of designation is proposed that matches the case of lexicalizing SMILE concept in Chinese smile words of “X 笑” type.The modifier X is chosen on the basis of salient semantic features of the concept while xiao 笑 is used based on the speaker’s overall image.Contrastively speaking,specific semantic components show a different degree of salience in their conflation in English and Chinese smile words.For example,while Chinese smile words exhibit the conflation of semantic components such as “sound”,“appearance”,“cause”,“purpose” and “agent”,most English smile words avoid including the semantic components of “purpose” and “agent”.In terms of their morphological features,English smile words have higher degree of lexicalization than their Chinese counterparts.English tends to use simple mono-morphemic words to express the concept of SMILE while Chinese prefers bimorphemic compounds.Theoretically speaking,this thesis provides an in-depth exploration of the semantic structure of smile words in English and Chinese,and thus contributes to the contrastive studies between the two languages.Besides,it investigates the lexicalization process within the framework of onomasiology,which explores the naming process behind lexicalization and thus reveals the link between the cognition and language.Methodologically speaking,this thesis makes a quantitative corpus linguistic analysis with data visualization.By using corpora and statistic tools,the thesis provides insights into the way these methods might successfully complement each other to yield a valuable result in linguistic research.Practically,it is of use to the teaching of synonyms and contributes to the field of lexicography.