英语专业毕业论文-英汉多义词对比与分析-以head和头首为例.doc

分 类 号： 单位代码：临临沂大学 毕业论文 英汉多义词对比与分析 以“head”和“头、首”为例姓 名 学 号 年 级 专 业 系（院） 指导教师 2016年10月18日A Brief Analysis of the Differences and Similarities of Polysemy in Chinese and English Taking “Head” and “头、首” for Example A Thesis Submittedto Foreign Languages School of Linyi Universityin Partial Fulfillment of the Requirementsfor the Degree of Bachelor of ArtByTian Changchun Supervisor： October, 2016AcknowledgmentsI would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude to all the teachers and friends who have offered me all kinds of help in accomplishing this thesis.First of all, I am extremely indebted to Lu Jianru, my supervisor, whose constant encouragement and illuminating guidance have motivated me at various stages of development of this thesis.I would also like to extend my sincere thanks to the teachers in Foreign Languages School of Linyi University, to whom I owe much of my knowledge in linguistics, literature and academic writing during my four-year study. They are Wang Xiaojun, Jiang Zhaozi and Han Miaomiao. Without their earnest teaching and invaluable lectures during the past four years, the completion of this thesis would have been unimaginable.In addition, I am also grateful to my classmates, who have offered assistance and support during my graduate students.AbstractThe English word “head” and Chinese word “头、首”, as basic human words, are equal polysemy in the two languages. From the perspective of metaphor and metonymy, taking “head” and “头、首” for example, after referring to a large number data, this thesis makes an comparison in two aspects, the entity function and the language function. By contrast, we can discover that English and Chinese word derivations have some similarities in cognitive respects and some differences in social culture and the denominal verbs aspects. These differences can be explained respectively from the perspective of cognition, culture and language. The author proposes four kinds of polysemy acquisition strategies to help us to learn and use Chinese and English words. Key Words: Metonymy; Metaphor; Polysemy 摘要 英语词 “head” 和汉语词 “头、首” 为对等的基本人体词，均属一词多义。本文主要从隐喻与转喻的角度，在查阅大量材料的基础上，以 “head”和 “头、首” 为例，通过对其语言和实体功能的对比，可以发现：英汉词义派生在基本认知方面相类似，在涉及社会文化方面和名动转用方面存在差异。这些异同可以分别从认知、文化及语言角度来加以解释。作者还提出了四种多义词习得策略帮助我们更好地学习和使用英汉词汇。关键词: 转喻，隐喻，一词多义Table of ContentsAcknowledgementsiAbstractii摘要iiiTable of ContentsivChapter One Introduction1Chapter Two The Theoretical Premises22.1 The Development of Polysemy.22.2 Metaphor and Polysemy32.3 Metonymy and Polysemy4Chapter Three A Contrastive Study of “head” and “头、首”63.1.The Entity Function Comparison.63.2 The Language Function Comparison.7Chapter Four Polysemy Acquisition Strategies94.1 Building a Polysemy Network.94.2 Highlighting the Core Meanings94.3 Combining with the Specific Context104.4 Paying Attention to Cultural Cognitive Differences10Chapter Five Conclusion12References13iii临沂大学外国语学院本科毕业论文Chapter One IntroductionThe cognitive linguistics believes: “The ancients often start from life and society, relying on the originally empirical intuitive thinking to know things and its basic ideas are the unity of subject and object.”(Gu, 2000, p: 2) The human body is the most familiar things. The cognitive structure of human body will inevitably be mapped to the cognitive understanding of the concept of the objects and things. People familiarize themselves with the body structure and experience as the basis of cognitive and starting point.Polysemy is a communist phenomenon both in English and Chinese languages. The research on it is an important subject about vocabulary. As we known, language is monosemous in its beginning, only a word with one meaning. Later with the development of the society and the expansion of peoples communication skills and to meet the need of the increasingly development of communication range, a language symbol will have two or more than two meanings. Polysemy phenomenon is the result of mans cognitive development, but also to meet the need of language economy principle.Metonymy and metaphor are two major types of word meaning extension. This article is about the research on cognitive metonymy and metaphor by analysis of “head” both in English and Chinese. We will research these questions: Firstly, How did “head” and “头、首” develop from monosemy to polysemy? Secondly, Are there any similarities or differences in their meanings? Thirdly, If differences are identified, what are the underlying causes leading to phenomenon.1Chapter Two The Theoretical Premises2.1 The Development of PolysemyThe development of word meaning from monosemy to polysemy follows two courses. Radiation, which is to say the meaning derived from the basic meaning like rays of light (original meaning) to the surrounding meaning, and each meaning is relatively independent. (Shao, 1994, p. 46-49)531264E.g. Neck(1) That part of the garment;(2) The neck of an animal used as food;(3) A narrow part between the head and body or base of any object. e.g. the neck of a violin; (4) The narrowest part of any thing: bottle, land, strait or channel.Concatenation, which is a type that after a meaning deriving from the basic meaning, and then another meaning derives from the second meaning, while the first meaning and the third have nothing related.123431E.g. Candidate(1) White-robed;(2) Office seeker in white gowns;(3) A person who seeks an office;(4) A person proposed for a place, award, etc.The traditional linguistic believe metaphor and metonymy are two forms of rhetoric in the language. The cognitive linguistics thinks that metaphor and metonymy are powerful tools for conceptualization and understanding of the abstract category. (Ungerer &Schmid, 2001, p. 231)2.2 Metaphor and PolysemyMetaphor involves the comparison of two concepts in that one is constructed in terms of the other. Its often described in terms of a target domain and a source domain. “The target domain is the experience being described by the metaphor and source domain is the means that we use in order to describe” (Hu, 2001, p. 136). For example, “Were wasting our time here”. This sentence is based on a metaphor “TIME IS MONEY”. In the target domain, time is conceptualized in terms of the source domain of money. Very often, abstract experiences are described in terms of more concrete ones. In cognitive linguistics, metaphors are represented by a simple formula: “X is Y”, that “X” is the target domain and “Y” is the source domain. The essence of metaphor is conceptualization. People often rely on simple and concrete concept to understand abstract and complex concepts for metaphorical cognition. Metaphor is pervasive in our daily life; it exists not only in language, but also exists in our thinking and behavior. In our life, people first know something easy to perceive, intuitive and concrete, then by association, combining with some concrete or abstract things. At last they will find their similarity, which causes the mapping between two domains and new meaning. According to cognitive linguistics, metaphor is the mapping between different cognitive domains, the understanding of one thing based on understanding another thing, so the similarity plays an important role in the 1development process of the metaphorical meaning. Metaphor uses similarities of things to find out the relevance of known and new things, thus using the known objects as new things, which produces a projection between the old and the new things in two cognitive domains, and then puts a concept domain into another concept domain. In the semantic category, the concrete meaning is developed into abstract meaning.Word “face”, means “front of your head”, such as “she has such a pretty face”. According to this meaning, “face” can be used to refer to “the front, upper, outer part of something”, For example, “the face of a clock”, “the face of a building”. “Face” can also refer to “a persons dignity or honor”, such as “save face”, “lose face”. “Face” can also be used to refer to “expression”, for example, “make a face”. In addition, “face” is also used to refer to “deal with difficult situations”, such as “face the reality”, etc. There are many polysemies like “face”, which use the correlation between things through metaphorical thinking and give a new meaning of old words.(Yu, 2010, p. 254-264)2.3Metonymy and Polysemy“Metonymy, in the cognitive literature is defined as a cognitive process in which the vehicle provides mental access to the target within the same domain” (Hu, 2011, p.137). In metonymy, the whole part is highlighted by using protrusive, perceptive and memorable part or a cognitive process which the part is replaced by the perceptible the whole part. Metonymy and metaphor are two different cognitive styles. The main difference is that: metaphor is based on the similarity principle, a projection between different cognitive domains, while metonymy is based on the principle of proximity, reflecting the same cognitive domain of two correlated elements. Proximity is another principle that people know things, namely, cognitive psychology tends regard the adjacent two components as a unit. The specific performance is when you want to know a thing you can refer to another correlated and similar thing. Some common useful form includes form replacing content, the part replacing the whole par, etc. For 1example, the sentence: “The kettle is boiling often”, actually refers to the “The water in the kettle is boiling”. Another example, “more hands are needed to finish this work”, “hands” here not only refers to the human hand, it means more people. In addition, there are some expressions of adjacent relation of metonymy. For example: “I like reading Shakespeare”, “the taxis are on strike”. In this sentence, “Shakespeare” refers to the works of Shakespeare; “taxi” refers to a taxi driver. By metonymy, the lexical meaning is extended and expanded, and human languages become more rich and colorful.1Chapter Three A Contrastive Study of “head”和“头、首” Our research started with consulting many relevant dictionaries, merging of superfine meanings, deleting some of the more professional, and at last built a set of more basic relatively independent meanings as the analytic framework of our study.3.1 The Entity Function Comparison意义英语汉语A.头部headache首：昂首挺胸头：头盔B.头发headband头：头型C.整个人15 a head头：头头儿D.脑筋（智力,思维）Above/over one head头：头脑E.物体的顶端或末梢The head of the lake首：首尾头：山头儿F.事情的起点、开端或终点The head of the table头：话头儿G.方面Speech arranged under five heads 头：心挂两头H.量词Fifty head of cattle头：五十头牛1A.头部C.整个人D.脑筋MM.EB.头发G.方面MME.物体的顶端或末梢F.事情起点、开端、或终点MM.EH.量词MMmetaphormemetonymy (1)Similarities: We can find common meanings in the eight comparisons; it shows the consistency between English and Chinese. It also proves that “As long as many languages take images from the physiological basis and the image structure is often similar” (Croft, &Cruse, 2006, p.98). (2) Differences: i. Disyllable is a phenomenon in Chinese. “儿” is a typically phenomenon inChinese, as a double syllable pattern which has no meaning. ii. Chinese “头” can be seen as a nominal classifier, which is not existent in English. It is because that Chinese accustomed to use nouns with nominal classifiers. And there is a great deal of nominal classifiers, however, English people use qualifiers less.3.2 The Language Function Comparison意义英语 汉语I.朝着，面向Head for the townJ.负责The minister headed the committee.K.正面相撞A head-on crashL.正视某问题加以解决Tackle a problem head1L.正视某问题加已解决MK.正面相撞MI.朝着，面向MA.头部M.EMJ.负责C.整个人“Head” has four meanings as a verb, while Chinese have no verb meaning. This is not accidental but typically reflects the characteristics of Chinese and English. It is frequently that nouns are used as verbs while notional words and the double syllable pattern are immobilized in modern Chinese, which inhibit the flexibility of words and accordingly Composite structure is used.(Zhou, 2000, P. 16)1Chapter Four Polysemy Acquisition StrategiesThrough analyzing the internal cognitive mechanism of polysemy, we think that cognitive theory will help to guide the student to carry on the polysemous word acquisition. Explanation of polysemy from the perspective of cognition and development can help students clearly understand the development of different meanings of words, and you can know the polysemous word meanings between different relationships. On this basis, this paper puts forward the tactic to help the students better learn words. 4.1 Building a Polysemy NetworkBy metaphor and metonymy mechanism, Polysemy expands from basic meaning to extension word and metaphoric meaning, and many other different meanings. According to polysemous word meaning extension way, we can generalize the different meanings of polysemous word and teach after finishing the meanings of order. It can make the cumbersome polysemy senses become simple and more convenient to students memory. Teachers in the process of teaching words should give the students to explain the internal relations between various meanings, making the students to form the semantic categories of words in the brain network as a whole. Taking “head” for example，we can find these expressions：Head of lake，head of page，head of government，use your head，Two heads are better than one。Through the analysis we found that these meanings are “head” of specific extension and expansion, from the concrete “head” to realize it is in the highest position of human body. It is the start point, the most important part of the human Body. Human thinking activities are controlled by “mind”, the central nervous system. So there will be more than one extension of the meanings. Students understand the links between the various meanings will form in your mind a clear semantic network diagram, thus improve the efficiency of learning.4.2 Highlighting the Core MeaningsAt first each term is used by people in just monosemous, along with the 1development of the language gradually gain more new meaning. The prototype category theory in cognitive linguistics believes that the meaning of every word in the category has a most central or core of the prototype meaning; others are all developed step by step on the basis of the prototype meaning. Teachers in teaching words, not only to help students establish a polysemous word meaning network, but also let the students master the relationship between the prototype and other significance of polysemy, which can let the students launch other significance from prototype. It can make students better grasp of a polysemous word, also can reduce the multiple meanings of the polysemous word memory load, and also can improve the effect of the polysemous word long-term memory.4.3 Combining with the Specific ContextWhen telling a polysemous word alone, it has a number of different meanings, but when it is placed in concrete context, it is monosemous, this is monosemy words. It is because the single character of every meaning of multiple meanings, people can accurately express themselves in their communication in daily life, and the listener also can understand what information the speaker accurately want to deliver. Misunderstanding or unclear expression will not occur. Teachers in the teaching process can accord to the single character of polysemy, combining with the specific context in the teaching of polysemous word meanings. In addition, the specific Context can also help the students to deepen understanding different meanings of the polysemous word, after mastering the polysemous word meanings, according to the specific context student can speculate the other unknown meaning of the polysemy.4.4 Paying Attention to Cultural Cognitive DifferencesCognitive linguistics believes that understanding the target language culture is the understanding of the thinking way of the target language, only in this way can we truly learn the target language. But cognitive way also reflects the diversity of culture, and the nationality and conventionality. Different national culture will inevitably lay a deep imprint on the mode of thinking, so there must be some differences in expression between English and Chinese language. For example, “拦路虎”, “水火不容” in 1Chinese, in English the expression is “oil and water”, “a lion in the way”. Cultural and cognitive features of are indispensable elements of vocabulary. Therefore, in order to make students better understand and use vocabulary, teachers should strengthen the target language culture import. (Cui, &Cui, 2010, p. 242-243)1Chapter Five ConclusionFrom the comparative study of cognitive characteristics in English and Chinese “head”, We can draw the following conclusions: 1. Words in different languages have the same basic meaning. We can find common rules in the cognitive characteristics. The cognitive approach is consistent. 2. The cognitive process of “head” in English and Chinese vocabulary shows the influence of cultural differences on mapping, the s