A Cognitive Semantic Study On Chinese Space-dimensional Adjective Shen

The research of polysemy has been the focus of all times.The space-dimensional adjective shen is a typical representative of polysemous word,which arouses the interests of many scholars.The formation of the polysemy is closely associated with the cognitive mechanisms of human beings.The process of meaning extension of the space-dimensional adjective shen is the result of semantic categorization based on the two spatial prototypical meanings connected by the family resemblance.However,former studies mainly focus on descriptive analysis and lack the analytical explanation.The distinctive prototypical semantic features of the word and the path of the meaning extension have not been mentioned.Meanwhile,the mechanism for the polysemy is not analyzed in a detailed way and the similar attributive characteristics of the cross-mapping have not been pointed out.With the collected data from dictionaries,books and corpus,this thesis aims to study the Chinese space-dimensional adjective shen based on prototype category,metaphor and metonymy theories in cognitive linguistics.The thesis finds out that there are two prototypical meanings of the space-dimensional adjective shen,that is,the large distance from the top to the bottom and from the outward to inward.We are likely to construct new concepts from the old ones owing to the economic principle of our cognition.The non-prototypical senses have developed from the central meanings and all the meanings are related to one 1the other by links which show the family resemblance.The polysemous semantic network of shen is foramed in that way.This thesis studies the meaning extensions and extension mechanism of the space-dimensional adjective shen,which makes the study more scientific and systematic.This thesis aims to study the two questions:(1)What is the semantic network of the Chinese space-dimensional adjective shen involving the prototypical meanings.and its non-prototypical meanings?(2)What are the cognitive mechanisms for sense extension of the polysemous space-dimensional adjective shen?The findings are as follows:(1)shen has two prototype meanings.The prototype of shen1 is the large space from the top to the bottom.It is the downward-vertical one-dimensional measurement.The prototype of shern2 is the large distance from outward to inward.It is the prototype for inward one-dimensional measurement.The non-prototypical senses include "dark color","late time","low in voice","state of degree","close in relationship","complicated","profound".The prototypical spatial meanings can be extended to the meaning of the non-prototypical meanings that are directly or indirectly related to the prototype meanings by the way of radiation,and hence the semantic network of shen is formed.The whole process fully reflects the characters of human being’s cognition:economic and flexible.(2)By analyzing the senses of shen,we can conclude that the space domain be mapping into other non-spatial domains,such as emotion domain,mental products domain,psychological products domain,time domain,color domain,sound domain.The cognitive mechanisms of metaphor and metonymy work together give rise to the meaning extension.The study has the practical and theoretical significance.Practically,it gives a full explanation of the senses and the sense extensions of the space-dimensional adjective shen,so people can have a better understanding of this space-dimensional adjective.Theoretically,the thesis studies the space-dimensional adjective shen based on the prototype category,conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy theory,which provides a practicable and feasible way to study other space-dimensional adjectives in the perspective of the cognitive semantics.In addition,it proves that cognitive semantics has great explanatory power in the generation of polysemy,so it would have great influence on the language teaching and students’ learning.