A Semantic Analysis Of "naosu" And "-naosu" From The Perspective Of Cognitive Semantics

Compound verbs occupy an important place in Japanese verbs and are indispensable in Japanese speech life.However,the acquisition of compound verbs is not easy for Japanese language learners.In particular,there is still a lack of semantic research on compound verbs in the "renewing & modifying" phase.Based on cognitive semantic theory,this study this study aims to clarify the semantic expansion process and the semantic relationship between the simple verb “naosu” and the compound verb“-naosu”,and strive to help the acquisition of compound verbs.In this study,the following results were clarified by analyzing the semantic status of the simple verb “naosu” and the compound verb “-naosu”.(1)After reviewing the meanings in six dictionaries(including koujien and national language encyclopedia,etc.),the meaning of “naosu” can be summarized into4 semantic groups and 14 semantic items.And according to the criteria(cognitive height and less semantic limitation),the prototype meaning of the verb “naosu” can be recognized as semantic group1 “state recovery”.(2)The semantics of the verb “naosu” can be roughly divided into four semantic groups: “state return”,“state improvement”,“state adjustment " and “morphological transformation",which can be further refined into 14 detailed meaning items: “repair”,“state recovery”,“emotional recovery”,“treatment and healing”,“correct”,“deletion and correction”,“rectify”,“position improvement”,“mode improvement”,“shortcomings deletion”,“item tided up”,“mode adjustment”,“morphological change”and “concept replacement”.Based mainly on metaphor,metonymy and synecdoche,the meaning of “naosu” expands from prototype meaning to the other semantic items.(3)From the modern Japanese written word equilibrium corpus,the use case of the compound verb “-naosu” can be retrieved and divided into type 1 “object modification”,type 3 “action repetition” “state improvement by action repetition” and “action mode change”,and type 4 “state recovery”.Subsequently,by using the image schema,three types of “-naosu” and special usage were analyzed separately,its semantic expansion process was investigated.(4)the special usage “tatenaosu” and “denaosu” should be positioned at the boundary between type 3 and type 4,after analyzing their combination conditions and semantic usage.In addition,by contrasting the meaning of the compound verb “-naosu”with the meaning of the verb “naosu”,the meaning relationship between the two was clarified.