Cognitive Basics In The Implicit Meaning Of Chinese Numerals

Numeral's common function is to calculate or compositor, but the Chinese numeral is very flexible, in oral and literary works, the numeral often do not express the concept of the exact number, and some even refer to other meanings instead of representing numbers, that is to say, that is numeral of the imaginary. As to this linguistic phenomenon, so far most of the scholars' points of view have focused on descriptions and summation with limited explanations and respective emphasis due to their different perspectives . This paper attempts to sort out modern Chinese numeral on the chance of giving a reasonable explanation of this linguistic phenomenon from a completely original angle.This paper is divided into three parts. The first part is to define and classify the virtual numeral with an brief analysis of the relationship between visual and substantial implication in terms of semantic development. Based on the analysis of the previous different views on virtual meaning of numeral, the first section summarize the concept of virtual numeral. It is widely acknowledged that virtual numeral denote quantity and emphasis and order which are all included in the connotation of virtual numeral in this paper. The explanations of emphasis and order are merged because they are similarly constructed with "1,2".Besides, it is unique to the numeral 2 that derogatory meaning appears when it is combined with other words ,compared to other numeral. As a result, virtual derogatory is added which contains the structure formed by "3,4". The second section begins with the establishment of the research object namely the analysis of the cognitive basis of virtual numeral from 1 to 10,100,1000,10000 and 12,36,72,etc,and then sort the virtual numeral according to their meanings. This paper lists the examples of virtual numeral sequently while the previous studies cite the examples that are just descriptive and involve a few numeral. The third section explains the connection between virtual and substantial reference in the semantic development. The substantial meaning of the numeral is the original one and virtual meaning is the extended meaning or untypical meaning. Most of the numeral can express some virtual meanings in pragmatic use. The sematic scope is extended around the original meaning and forms a radial structure.The second part of the paper is on the use of the theory, and analyses the relationship between the theories and the virtual numeral according to the analysis of examples of individual numeral. The theories mainly derived from the theories of the cognitive semantics from Mr. Wang Yin's "cognitive linguistics" .This book outlines the 12 kinds of basic viewpoints and methods of cognitive semantics, four of which are used in this paper: experience, cyclopaedics, metonymy, conformity.The third part ,as the main content, elaborated on the use of experience concept, Wikipedia concept of metaphor (including metonymy ), integration theory in virtual numeral.The first section, from the view of experience, analyses the virtual cognitive basis of the numeral "5" and "10", "4" and "8" .The virtual reference of "5" and "10" is closely related to human's physical experience. Around the trunk, head ,the two hands, the two legs add up to "five". Palms and soles are the core parts,tha hand with five fingers and the foot with five toes are the indispensable parts for human's survival. At the time which lacks the concept of numbers, the number of fingers in one hand is "5" in all,so "5" is considered as the ultimate unit of the ordinal numbers which is used to express "a large quantity". The virtual meaning of 10 resembles that of 5.The virtual meaning of 4 derives from theKnowledge of universe: east, south, west, north, spring, summer, autumu , winter, all included. 8 is the further division of 4 and is much more comprehensive and detailed, so 4 and 8 both means a large quantity.The second section taking the encyclopedia as a guide, analyse the virtual numerl from the angles of calculating capacity, cultural basics, psychological point of view respectively. and so on the basis of false numeral refers to the analysis. To analyse 3,100,1000,10000 according to the calculating power. The virtual meaning of 3 comes from the calculating power of human being, for when calculating the big numbers it is uneconomical to accumulate 1 while2 is efficient. Only even number is available by accumulating or doubling 2 and the odd number is the outcome of combing even number with 1.Thanks to 3,the calculating capacity of numeral is significantly improved. "Three" is the percentage, as the smallest unit of number, it can express not only a large but also a small quantity. "Hundred", "thousand" are indeed big numbers and therefore can naturally mean a huge quantity in contrast to the age when people calculated by counting fingers. From a cultural foundation, "2" refers to the virtual meaning mainly derived from the ancient dialectics theory of Yin and Yang's blending which result in the whole world. The cognitive foundation of the fixed combination of 3 and 5,3 and 4 can be explained from the cultural angle. In Ma Sizhou's point of view, the virtual reference of 6 originated from the dice and 7 is based on the ancient concept that 7 is the periodical span of the universe. The ancient concept of "12" learns from Ye Jiuru's "12-chen theory". As for "36" it may be related to Qin's worship for "six" and "72" is based on Mr. Wen Yiduo's viewpoints. The cognitive foundation of the numeral "9"'s virtual meaning is analysed from the psychological point of view.The third section analyses the cognitive foundation of how numeral 1 and the fixed combination realize their virtual reference according to the metaphor(including synecdoche) .That of the fixed combination is divided into3 categories: by synecdoche, metaphor or both of them. Starting from the fourth quarter to explain the concept of integration numeral refers to the level of virtual and how to distinguish between numeral "three" virtual virtual means that more and less.Section V as a separate part will analyse the forms of "一A二B" and"七A八B" and "A七B八"which is not covered in the past sections.To sum up, this paper ,guided by the experience ,cyclopaedics, metonymy, conformity of cognitive semantics from a spanking new perspective ,aims to probe into the possibility of numeral virtual reference and the cognitive system of switch from the original meaning to the virtual reference by the way of combining the general cognitive foundation generating from semantics with the Chinese culture features with the hope of making it profoundly understood that numeral have virtual reference. The origins of some numeral references in certain fixed phrases are not yet available, so they may not convincingly explained. The explanations maybe not comprehensive due to relatively less consideration of pragmatics and dialects. What's more, the scholar circle has disagreement on the definition of numeral references, so it remains to be further explored.