A Study Of The Evolution And The Impetus Of The Polysemous-words Meanings From Systemic Functional Perspective

As a universal language phenomenon, polysemy has a good many advantages, such aseconomical, concise and efficient communicative features, and so on. The polysemous word, as aresult of its flexibility in practice, is prior to other ways of meaning formation such asword-creation, word-formation or borrowing. Within the framework of systemic functionallinguistics, the thesis explores the dynamic evolution of the polysemous-word meanings withqualitative and quantitative analysis and illustrates the external impetus of the polysemous-wordmeanings with the context theory. Firstly, the thesis illustrates the dynamic evolution of thepolysemous-word meanings in the light of the probability statistics of Brown corpus withdiachronic and synchronic analysis. The study attempts to propose a vine-like model about theevolution of the polysemous-word meanings and its four biological properties: phototropism,parasitism, regeneration and animacy. Secondly, the impetus of the polysemous-wordmeanings lies in both the internal cause and the external cause. Cognitive linguistics has madean in-depth analysis on the internal cause of the polysemous meanings. Based on this, thethesis holds the view that the context is the external impetus of the polysemous-wordmeanings. The context determines the choice, restriction, and generation of lexical meaningsof polysemy in a text. In this thesis, the generation mechanism of the polysemous-wordmeanings is not on the base of the cognitive analysis, but through the context theory to seekfor the reasonable interpretation for its impetus. Thus, the context theory not only helps usunderstand polysemy more comprehensively and objectively, but also enriches its ownexplanation power in lexical meaning from systemic functional perspective. Based on theprevious academic achievements about polysemy abroad and at home, the thesis presents thedynamic evolution of the polysemous-word meanings with qualitative and quantitative analysis toreveal the nature of polysemy with birth, growth, maturation and death, and then illustrates itsexternal impetus with context theory within the framework of systemic functional linguistics.The thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter One is the introduction, which presents thepurpose, research questions, research methodology, significance, and organization of the thesis.Chapter Two is the literature review, which displays the previous studies on polysemy both abroad and at home. Chapter Three introduces the theoretical background, including the concept of context,context theory within the framework of systemic functional linguistics, and the relationshipbetween context of situation and text. Chapter Four explores the dynamic evolution of thepolysemous-word meanings. We propose a vine-like model about polysemy and its four characters:phototropism, parasitism, regeneration and animacy to reveal the natural development of thepolysemous meanings with birth, growth, maturation and death. Then taking noun “face” asthe example, we analyze the evolution regularity of its polysemous meanings in detail. ChapterFive illustrates the external impetus of the polysemous-word meanings from systemicfunctional perspective, which makes an analysis of the choice, restriction, and generation ofthe context to lexical meanings in a text. Chapter Six is the conclusion.