"release Name" Cognitive Research

Written by LiuXi who was a scholar in the Dong Han dynasty, Shi Ming(《释名》)has always been praised by some Chinese scholars while criticized by others. Scholars who hold the traditional point of view asserted that "Shi Ming"is too idealistic, "ShengXun"has also been strongly criticized because of its subjectivity and lack of supporting evidential proof. On the other hand, scholars praise "Shi Ming"for casting off from dependence upon "JingXue"and avoiding farfetched moral lectures. They found "Shi Ming"to be the first book which actually studies etymology using the linguistic method, making it the first etymologic in China. As a whole however, "Shi Ming "has not gotten little recognition from mainstream academia. As the study of language advances, linguistics gradually moves from objective depiction to theoretical explanation. Scholars are no longer satisfied with understand past language forms. Rather, they are more eager to understand why the language form became the way it is. Because philosophy and the method of study have changed, points of view concerning "Shi Ming"has changed as well. As the study of language motivation has developed, scholars have put more emphasis on finding what makes the voice and meaning of language symbols assimilate. The preface of "Shi Ming"says: "People say words everyday but have no idea why". In other words, when people named things, what made them choose one name as apposed to another. The reason people give certain names to certain objects is not because of predetermination, but rather because of underlying patterns and relationships between meaning and voice. Which voice will combine with which meaning can not be neither forecast nor preordained, but the likelihood of combining some voice and meanings is greater than the likelihood of others. These more likely combinations are the object of the study : the motivation of the language. If you want know the motivation of the language, you can't just be restricted in the inside of the language system, you also should know psychology of the people who use the language and the background of the history and culture linked to the certain age. And the cognitive linguistics is based on the philosophy view of experiential realism, it thought that the language of human is come from cognitive, the ability of speak is one part of our cognitive ability. And the cognitive ability is base on perceiving and experiencing the outside world. Based on this point of view, cognitive linguistics bring on the theories of cognitive metaphor, metonymy, image schemas, prototype category. Those theories give convictive explain to the linguistic problems that hard to solve by previous theories. "Shi Ming"has full sense of experiential realism, the explain of words by writer LiuXi is based on be familiar with the social life, it is write for the ordinary people of that time, it get rid of the following the conclusions of the previous research, avoided moral and ethic preach, reflected the thought of the people in that time more actually. Based on the factors above, the author thinks that using a cognitive approach to study "Shi Ming"is not only feasible but also has great potential. Research "Shi Ming"by using a cognitive approach can also help us realize the relationships between language, cognition and experience, as well as help us discover the commonality of the human language. A great deal of cognitive metaphors exist in "Shi Ming", and scholars divide these metaphors into four basic categories according to the attributes and characters of the objects in the target domain:1) the biology metaphor field, the metaphor field of ,2) the anti-biology metaphor field , 3)the nonentity metaphor field and 4) the analogy metaphor field. Each basic metaphor field contains several sub-metaphor-fields. For example, the biology metaphor field contains the sub-metaphor field of plants, human beings , and Pan-biology. We also find there is a lot of metonymy in "Shi Ming". It contains the relationships of the whole and the part, the action and its object, the object and its circumstance, and the course and the result. In this article, much emphasis is placed on the analysis of the metonymy of the concepts of time in "Shi Ming". In the last part of the article, the use of prototype category in "Shi Ming"was analyzed, the author found that when explaining color abstract categories, LiuXi oftenused the most typical member of the category as the example. This reflects the fact that people use the most typical member as the center of a category construction. Research of "Shi Ming"using a cognitive view is just the beginning, as the author's wisdom is limited, many problems can't be analyzed in a specific way. This article is offered merely as a clue, with the hope that scholars can not only pay more attention to the way that cognitive theory is used in the study of Chinese language phenomenon but also take part in perfecting the research of Chinese language.