A Study Of Polysemous Body Terms And Their Translation Based On Frame Semantics

Polysemous body terms, which are widely used in everyday life, are closelyconnected with language research. Many scholars abroad and in home have maderesearch on the body terms. However, these studies are far from systematic withsemantic extension mechanism and translation of polysemous body terms. Thisresearch takes ten polysemous body terms as research subject and focuses on thecognitive mechanism of semantic extension of body terms, so as to discoversimilarities and differences between English and Chinese senses of polysemous bodyterms, as well as to offer translation models and strategies of polysemous body terms.Within the theoretical framework of frame semantics, this research is designed tostudy the semantic construction of polysemous body terms and their translation byadopting the following research methods: combination between quantitative andqualitative analyses, combination between description and interpretation andcontrastive method. Firstly, this thesis has a research on the semantic extensionmechanism of body terms based on frame semantics and prominent rules. Secondly,this thesis makes a comparative study of the extended senses number of ten bodyterms between Chinese and English. Thirdly, the detailed description andinterpretation of the extended senses of some body terms will be made according tothe semantic extension mechanism. Especially, the sense system of "head/头" and"hand/手are analyzed in order to better the research in systematization. Finally, thecognitive translation models and strategies of polysemous body terms are studied. Inthe conclusion, the major findings have been got as follows:1. From frame semantics, cognitive mechanism of semantic extension of bodyterms lies in the Petruck’s Body Frame. Besides, prominent rules in body frame alsoplay an important role in semantic extension of polysemous body terms.2. The similarities and differences between English and Chinese senses ofpolysemous body terms have been found through comparing the extended senses number of ten body terms between English and Chinese. The similarities include:(1)The body parts, which are located in the more salient position than other body parts,have stronger extended power and produce more senses than less salient body parts;(2)The body parts, which possess the prominent shapes, can produce higher shapesenses than other body terms;(3) The body parts, which reside in the importantposition in the whole body, can derive more extended senses from the prominentposition than other body parts;(4) The body parts, which are comparatively functional,can extend the senses mainly from the prominent function.There are three differences as follows:(1) The semantic number of English bodyterms is generally higher than the semantic number of Chinese body terms;(2) Thenumber of the shape and function senses of English body terms is higher than Chinesebody terms;(3) The number of the position senses of Chinese body terms is higherthan the English body terms.3. On the basis of Kussmaul’s creative translation and Miao Ju’s transferringthinking, the three cognitive translation models of body terms have been proposed:Corresponding body frames/scenes; Framing the body scenes; Thinking up culturalelements in body frames. Based on the cognitive translation models, threecorresponding translation strategies of body terms are tentatively proposed, that is,Keeping corresponding body frames; Keeping the prominent elements in body frames;Considering cultural elements in body frames.