The Semantic Cognitive Studies Of "老" In Modern Chinese

Polysemy has been generated inevitably in the process of language development. It isone of the most significant topics, which has been brought attention to linguists for manyyears. For example, the term ‘老’ could be referred to as a typical example in modern Chinese.This paper will analyse the meaning of Chinese character ‘老’ from various perspectivesystematically, by using theories of cognitive linguistics. In this paper, how semantic changecontributes to language development will be examined as well.This paper will be divided into five sections as follows:Definitions of Chinese term ‘老’ will be introduced in the first section. Methodologyand literature review will also be introduced in this section.In the second section, semantic change of the term ‘老’ will be analysed throughcombing Modern Chinese Dictionary and some relevant dictionaries. Thus, it could find theinternal semantic system of the term ‘老’.The third section will explain multiple meanings of the term ‘老’ on the premise ofmetaphor and metonymy theories in a cognitive way. Meanwhile, this section alsoreasonability of semantic items in the process of cognition, from resources to targets.The fourth section will summarize various affixes that are related to the term ‘老’, andtheir different shades of meanings. Further, it has been distinguished different usages of theterm ‘老’ from content word to function word.The fifth section is the conclusion of the whole paper. Suggestions and challengingissues will be proposed in this section.