The Study On Polysemous Word SET From Cognitive Perspective

This paper takes the verb SET as an example to study the phenomenon of polysemy from the perspective of cognitive linguistics on the basis of conceptual metaphor theory,prototype category theory,image schema theory,as well as trajector and landmark theory.In this paper,all of the data are collected from Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary(7th edition,2005),Cambridge Learner’s Dictionary(1st edition,2002),Longman Advanced American Dictionary(1st edition,2003),Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary(6th edition,2004)and Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English(4th edition,2004)and also the Brown corpus.The paper adopts the case study research method with the combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis.Word SET is selected as the research object.First of all,the author collects 23 meanings of SET from Brown corpus and the authoritative dictionaries,then randomly extracts 416 sentences containing SET from the Brown corpus to study.Secondly,on the basis of conceptual metaphor theory,all the meanings of SET and valid data are divided into literal meanings(basic meaning and elaborations)and metaphorical meanings.Moreover,with the help of the Brown corpus to statistic out the number and percentage of its various meanings.In addition,the author carries out the research of classification of elaborations and metaphorical senses.This paper emphatically analyzes how the metaphorical meanings of the word SET come into being on the basis of the prototype meaning.The results show that SET conforms to the development mechanism of polysemy.It can be seen from the Brown corpus that the literal meaning of SET is used the most frequently;the elaborations can be divided into seven types;the metaphorical meaning of SET can be analyzed from nine aspects.According to different types of target domains,the metaphorical meanings of SET can be divided into four categories.Finally,through the point of ICM,the senses of SET are classified into four types of CMs for further study.This article proves that the extension meanings of SET are obtained from the several cognitive methods such as metaphor and image schema from the perspective of cognitive linguistics,to further verify the theory of cognitive linguistics.The multiple meanings of a word is the result of human’s experience in the real world during the process of the language diachronic development.Thus it is concluded that human know the world constantly on the basis of philosophy of experience,through familiar and known objects to recognize the unknown things.