Abstract:Polysemy refers to a word that has more than one meaning. Polysemy is the most important and most common semantic phenomenon in both Chinese and English. Therefore, it has attracted much attention of linguists and they did futher studies of it. However, the traditional language theory from the Saussure theory to the modern semantic theory failed to reveal the nature of it and they also failed to give a full explanation of it. With the rise of cognitive linguistics in the 1980s, an increasing number of scholars began to study this phenomenon from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. Therefore, it opened up a new field to the study of the phenomenon of polysemy.

This thesis will study the formation process and the semantic extention mechanisms of this phenomenon from a cognitive perspective within the relevant theory of categorization and prototype, metaphor and metonymy. The goal of the thesis is to make a systematic explanation of the formation process of polysemy and analysis the connections of the related senses of a polysemous word.

Keywords: polysemy; cognitive language; metaphor; metonymy; prototype

Contents

摘要

Abstract

Chapter 1 Introduction-1

Chapter 2 Literature Review-3

2.1 Introduction-3

2.2 Definition of Polysemy-3

2.3 Researches of Different Schools on Polysemy-3

2.3.1 The Classical Approach to Polysemy-3

2.3.2 The Structuralist Approach to Polysemy-4

2.3.3 The Cognitive Approach to Polysemy-4

2.3.4 Comments on Previous Researches upon Polysemy-4

Chapter 3 The Theoretical Foundation to the studies of polysemy-7

3.1 General Ideas about Cognitive Linguistics-7

3.2 The Theory of Categorization and Prototypes-7

3.2.1 Cognitive Categories-7

3.2.1.1The Theory of Classical Categorization-7

3.2.1.2 The Theory of Cognitive Categorization-8

3.2.2 Cognitive Prototypes-8

3.3 Core Senses and Meaning Extension-9

3.4 Polysemy as a Prototype Category-9

3.4.1 Types of Polysemous Categorization-9

3.4.1.1 Patterns of Derivation-9

3.4.1.2 Prototype Splits-9

3.5 Summary-10

3.6 Case studies-10

Chapter 4 Mechanisms for Sense Extension in Polysemy-13

4.1 The Theory of Conceptual Metaphor-13

4.1.1 The Ubiquity of Metaphor-13

4.1.2 The Internal Structure of Metaphor-13

4.2 The Theory of Metonymy-14

4.3 Metaphorical and Metonymic Sense Extension-14

4.4 Case studies-14

Chapter 5 Conclusion-17

References-19

Acknowledgements-20