A Cognitive Approachto The Translation Of Polysemy In Gu Wen Guan Zhi

Polysemy, as an universal phenomenon in human language, has long been among the centraltopics in the study of word meaning. Defects exist in the illustration of polysemy proposed byObjective Linguistics. While Cognitive Linguistics underlines relation between language, cognitionand the outer world and holds that words are both cognitively and psychologically based, whichoffers theoretical framework for this thesis.Among polysemy translation researches, previous studiesoftenadoptEnglishand modern Chineseas corpus, butless workhas been donetotheexploration ofpolysemy in Chinese Classics. Therefore, this thesis focuses on the topic “in the translation process,how the specific meaning of a polysemous classical Chinese is interpreted and reconstructed?” Withthe Chinese Classics Collection Gu Wen Guan Zhi as the corpus, under the theoretical framework ofcognitive linguistics (domain, context, specificity), the problem is mainly investigated from thefollowingaspects:(1)Whatkindsofclassicalwordscanbeincludedinpolysemy?(2) How do domain and context effect the interpretation of a polysemous word in thecomprehensionstage?(3) How does specificity effect the reconstruction of the specific meaning of the polysemouswordintheexpressionstage?(4)WhataretheprinciplesguidingthetranslationofpolysemyinChineseClassics?Based on the studies of previous scholars, this paper has the following major conclusions bycollectingandanalyzingvariousexamples:(1) Polysemy of classical Chinese not only includes polysemous words in general sense butalso a peculiarkindofwords: words thathavedifferentmeanings inancientand modern Chinese.(2)The specific meaning of a polysemous word should be interpreted in the background. Domains(physical domain and psychological domain) offer the general background and contexts (situationalcontext, sentential context and knowledge context) offer thespecific background.They both embodythe embodiment of translation process.(3) Specificity on lexical level mainly refers to hyponymyand synonymy of theword category. In the process of meaning reconstruction, hyponymy effects thelevel of specificity, while synonymy profiles different semantic sides of the word category. Itembodies the conceptualization of the translator.(4) Translation process of polysemy in ChineseClassics is of embodiment and conceptualization. The basic principle of classical polysemetranslationliesinthecombinationofobjectivityandsubjectivity.By collecting and analyzing data selected from Gu Wen Guan Zhi, the thesis dissects thetranslation process of polysemy in Chinese Classics; moreover, it declares great explanatory power of cognitive linguistics to Chinese Classics translation. It offers a new perspective for other relatedstudies.