A Cognitive Semantic Study Of Idioms From The Book Of Songs

Plenty of previous studies have been made on idioms from The Book of Songs from perspectives of grammatical structure, semantic structure, and culture, which provide a solid foundation for the studies of idioms from The Book of Songs from a cognitive perspective. However, previous studies do not involve the formation bases, formation motivations, and the semantic cognitive mechanisms of idioms from The Book of Songs. On the basis of the previous studies, this thesis tries to find out the formation bases and formation motivations of idioms from The Book of Songs, and then probe into their semantic cognitive mechanisms with the help of cognitive semantic theories.There are three research questions in this thesis:(1) What is the classification of idioms from The Book of Songs and what are their main features?(2) What are the formation bases and the formation motivations of idioms from The Book of Songs?(3) What are the semantic cognitive mechanisms of idioms from The Book of Songs?There are three findings in this thesis:(1) According to the grammatical structures, idioms from The Book of Songs can be divided into six categories: coordinate structure idioms, subject-predicate structure idioms, modifier-head structure idioms, predicate-object structure idioms, predicate-complement structure idioms, and serial verb structure idioms; they have three main features: strong characteristics of the times of the Pre-Qin Dynasty, obscurity of language and strong lyricism;(2) The formation bases are the experiential bases, knowledge structure and cultural model. The formation motivations are made up of the intra-linguistic factors and extra-linguistic factors;(3) The semantic cognitive mechanisms of the meanings of idioms from The Book of Songs include conceptual metaphor, conceptual metonymy and the combination of conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy.The thesis is of some theoretical and practical significance:(1) Theoretically speaking, it attempts to utilize cognitive linguistic theories to analyze the linguistic phenomena in Chinese classical works, which makes a positive contribution to the localization of the cognitive linguistic theories;(2) Practically speaking, it is of great significance in broadening the study of the language in The Book of Songs. The previous studies on the idioms from The Book of Songs are mainly made through a descriptive method, while this study adopts an explanative method to clearly demonstrate the formation bases, the formation motivations of idioms from The Book of Songs, and the cognitive mechanisms of the semantic meaning. Therefore, it can promote the understanding of the readers of The Book of Songs. Besides, it can also be helpful to the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language.