A Cognitive Semantic Study On Chinese Word Lao

Polysemy is a very common phenomenon in language. In modern Chinese language, lao has various senses and can be used as a noun, an adjective, an adverb, and a prefix. During the early Qin and Han Dynasties, lao was used as an adverb or a noun. With a long history of evolution, its senses and functions have increased gradually. In Xiandaihanyucidian(《现代汉语词典》), lao has17senses and more than200entries. The complexity of lao has aroused the attention of a lot of scholars, however, Chinese scholars have mainly focused on the grammaticalization aspect. Some may have analyzed the influences of semantic change on grammaticalization, but they seldom find a comparatively systematic interpretation of lao from a semantic cognitive perspective.Based on the theories in cognitive linguistics, namely, the prototype theory, conceptual metaphor theory and conceptual metonymy theory, this thesis focuses on the senses of lao through both diachronic and synchronic analysis with the collected data from dictionaries, books and corpus. Through the comparatively systematic and comprehensive investigation and study of the senses of lao, we found out the following: the prototypical sense of lao is "aged"; extended senses are directly or indirectly related to the prototypical sense of lao, and all these form the semantic network of lao; conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy are two important cognitive ways of meaning extension of lao; some usages of lao in modern Chinese are the results of the influences of the development of society and culture on it.This thesis can contribute the understanding of lao in Chinese in terms of the cognitive semantics. We study the ways of sense extension of lao, making it more scientific and systematic.