A Study Of Three-syllable Words With Metaphorical Meaning

With the development of the Internet and the emergence of the new items,the three-syllable words increases its proportion in modern Chinese vocabulary system.However,the study of three-syllable is still in the weak link in the academic field,and the researches are mainly about its definition and the distinctions between three-syllable words and three-syllable phrases.So the author takes the three-syllable words with metaphoric meaning as the starting point,and strives to carry out a rather comprehensive description and study on the related issues about the meaning in order to make up for the gap in the academic field.In this article,with the 7th edition of The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary(hereinafter referred to as "contemporary Han")as the scope of study to have a self-built closed corpus,including exhaustive statistics of the three-syllable polysemous words containing metaphors.Combined with "Corpus Online" and" Peking University Chinese-English Bilingual Corpus" and Su Xinchun's Contemporary Chinese Classification Dictionary,the formation of three-syllable polysemous words with metaphoric meaning and the formation process of its metaphoric meaning are specifically explained.From the prospective of Semantic mapping,the author explores the relationship between the original meaning and metaphoric meaning of such words,describes the use of three-syllable words and analyzes its causes.It is found that the proportion of three-syllable polysemous words with metaphoric meaning not only account for a large proportion,but also have great characteristics in meaning:First,three-syllable words are mostly created by two-syllable words and four-syllable words and their metaphoric meaning is based on its original meaning without changing its part of speech.Second,if the original meaning of a three-syllable words refers to a specific thing,it is more likely to have a metaphoric meaning,which belongs to another category of meaning.Meanwhile,the similarity between this two meanings is not high.Third,in the same three-syllable,the metaphoric meaning is used more frequently than original meaning,which determines by its rhetoric color of a three-syllable polysemous word with metaphoric meaning.There are 104 three-syllable polysemous words with metaphoric meaning,accounting for 15 percent of all the words with metaphoric meaning.The proportion is far beyond the 2.5 percent of monosyllabic words with metaphoric meaning and the 6.5 percent of four-syllable words with metaphoric meaning.From the aspect of morpheme word formation,three-syllable words with three morphemes are of the great majority.There is no Bimorphemic three-syllable word and merely one monomorphemic three-syllable word.From the aspect of metrical structure,the structure of "2+1”isn't in a dominant position,while "1+2" makes up 51.5 percent of three-syllable words.From the aspect of grammatical part of speech,nouns are the largest proportion of 45.1 percent.Besides,they are stable in part of speech and don't have concurrent phenomenon of word.Only one concurrent word and five concurrent phrases,accounting for 5.8 percent.From the aspect of grammatical relationship,supplementary structure and coordinate construction don't exist in three-syllable words.Subject-predicate structure and mesomorphic structure are very few,too.Verb-object construction,which represented by "1+2" structure,and modifier-head construction,which represented by"2+1" structure,enjoys the majority.There are four formation of three-syllable polysemous words with metaphoric meaning:Words produced by phrases;New words produced by words;Phrases produced by words and new meanings produced by words.Among them,new words produced by words make up the largest proportion of 39.4 percent.The metaphoric meaning of three-syllable polysemous words with metaphoric meaning is evolved by changing the part of speech and the meaning of words on the basis of the original meaning.The metaphor of most of the words only changed the word meaning without changing the part of speech.Of the 103 words studied,95 are the cases.Analyzing from Su Xinchun's Five-level semantic classification System of Contemporary Chinese Classification Dictionary,the author has found out:First,on the first-level,the item of original meaning represents specific subjects,matters and actions,while metaphoric meaning represents abstract matters,such as human's qualities,mental activities,life experiences and their impacts on society and so on.Second,on the second-level,the items of original meaning that engendering metaphoric meaning are usual animals,kinship terminologies,job titles,specific behaviors of human beings,daily necessities and landscapes,etc.Third,from the prospective of semantic mapping,The mapping relationship between the original meaning and the metaphorical meaning of the three-syllable polysemous words with metaphorical meaning,no matter which kind of first—level is the original meaning mapped in,is dominated by cross second-level mapping,and the number of maps of the same first—and second—level is small.The original meaning and metaphorical meaning of three-syllable polysemous words with metaphorical meaning belong to the same class less,the distance between them is far and the similarity is not high.This paper makes a systematic study on the use of the three-syllable polysemous words with metaphorical meanings.By making exhaustive statistics and combing of the related materials in "Corpus Online" and "Peking University Chinese-English bilingual corpus ",the author divides their metaphorical meanings into three types of metaphorical meaning:weak,neutral and strong based on the different use of metaphorical meaning and original meaning.And the strong metaphorical meaning accounts for 50 percentage.This situation is contrary to the use of words with metaphorical meanings in other syllables.The metaphorical meanings of other syllable words are mainly weak metaphorical meanings,up to 46%,and strong metaphorical meanings are only 36%.That is to say,the metaphorical meaning of other syllables is lower than that of the original meaning,while the metaphorical meaning of the three-syllable word is more frequently used than the original meaning.The frequent use of metaphorical meanings of three-syllable polysemous words is closely related to the rhetorical color contained in themselves.The rhetorical color of three-syllable polysemous words with metaphorical meanings is embodied in distinct image color,rich emotional color and strong written language color.In terms of image color,the words with visual color are mainly noun and adjective words,the words with kinesthetic image are mainly verb words,and some words have auditory image,taste image and tactile image.In terms of emotional color,the derivation of the original meaning and metaphorical meaning of three-syllable polysemous words with metaphorical meaning can be divided into five forms:praise meaning?praise meaning;praise meaning?derogatory meaning;neutralmeaning?praise meaning;derogatory meaning?derogatory meaning and neutral meaning?derogatory meaning.The proportion of words with derogatory meaning?neutral meaning is the most,up to 38.8 percentage,and the proportion of words with emotional color derivation as praise meaning-*derogatory meaning is the least,accounting for only 1 percentage.The stylistic color expression of three-syllable polysemous words with metaphorical meaning is closely related to the selectivity of oral color and the characteristics of metaphorical meaning itself.although the overall spoken color of three-syllable words is strong,this characteristic is not reflected in the three-syllable words with metaphorical meaning,but the vivid and vivid image of metaphorical meaning itself.Obscure and cultural characteristics make the three-syllable polysemous words with metaphorical meanings have a strong written language color.Bright image color,rich emotional color and strong written language color determine the high frequency use of metaphorical meaning.