The cognitive structures of Japanese TE (Hand)─An approach by cognitive linguistics─
Date Issued
2007
Date
2007
Author(s)
Lin, Ke-Cheng
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the polysemous structure and cognitive structure of the Japanese word, TE. The morphology, phonology and semantics are most common analysis tools employed in related research from literature survey. Among of those tools, the listed semantics in dictionary is core interests in the research of semantics. However, the motivation of semantics formation and interaction in between are not accentuated and in equitable justification in those research works. In addition, the most attentions in research of semantic analysis are mainly on the explanation of polysemy. Nevertheless, the understanding of TE in language expression is not only in response to polysemy explanation but also to cognitive structure. Therefore, in the present study, investigation of polysemy of TE was determined and discussed. Moreover, the subjects of cognitive activities with respect to human being’s aspect and process were also evaluated.
Results of this study are summarized as following:
1.The way humans cognize the body part expression TE, which means “hand” in Japanese, can be considered through two kinds of cognitive processes; one is based on metonymical link which basically relies on spatial contiguity and conceptual contiguity with HANDS, and the other one is based on metaphorical link which relies on the similarity with our hands. The former is more productive than the latter and it has more related expressions in daily use.
2.Among those spatial concepts related to TE, there are some polysemous usages where TE means ‘human’ or ‘direction.’ Some of them are conceptualized based on the designation of TE’s spatial concepts. Compared with this, those expressions which are formed through the conceptual contiguity of TE, are highly related to the functional aspects of TE.
3.As a major intermediate tool of human action and behavior, the functional aspects of TE are profiled in the action frame. By examining the content of action and the result of action, we can figure out how the polysemy of TE has been created. Besides, the Japanese word, TE, can be even used to evaluate the content of behavior or the process, or the progress of behavior.
4.This paper concludes that the metaphorical expressions of TE, based on the cognition to the similarity with our hands, are conceptualized through human cognition to the position of hands, the shape of hands and the functions of hands. The concept mapping occurs between the source domain and target domain, based on similarity. We also find that more than one kind of similarities exist between those metaphorical expressions and TE.
Subjects
框架
多義構造
換喻
隱喻
參照點
frame
polysemous structures
metonymy
metaphor
reference point
Type
other
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
ntu-96-R93127006-1.pdf
Size
23.53 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum
(MD5):cb0dd42f53fcb696f0e5007d7b5eb78e