A Cognitive Study Of The Polysemy Of ACROSS

Polysemy is a common phenomenon in natural languages and the study of polysemy is a hot topic in the linguistic field.This thesis mainly takes the Image Schema Theory,Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Conceptual Metonymy Theory from Cognitive Linguistics as the theoretical foundation.Image schema is an abstract and spatial structure,which is also the foundation of conceptual metonymy and conceptual metaphor.Conceptual metonymy is associated with the alternate shifts of different elements in the same cognitive domain.Conceptual metaphor is related to the abstract thinking through mapping across different domains.This adopts both the diachronic and synchronic perspectives to conduct a qualitative and cognitive study of the English spatial particle ACROSS.The data in this paper are collected from the British National Corpus(BNC)and Oxford English Dictionary(OED).This thesis takes a synchronic view of the spatial and nonspatial senses of ACROSS and a diachronic perspective to the process of its semantic changes and shifts of the word classes.This thesis aims at answering the following questions:(1)What are the spatial senses of ACROSS? What are the motivations for the sense extension?(2)What are the nonspatial senses of ACROSS? What are the motivations for the sense extension?(3)What process has ACROSS undergone in meaning extension?This study has the following findings: ACROSS has seven spatial senses,which fall into dynamic senses and static senses.Based on the analysis of the spatial relations and motion patterns of ACROSS,we summarized some features of it.Firstly,the dynamic senses of ACROSS can express more spatial relations than the static senses.Secondly,the dynamic senses of ACROSS can depict not only factive motion but also fictive motion.There are linear,arc-shaped and curved paths in terms of the dynamic senses.The static senses can only depict fictive motion whose path is linear.In addition,in the nonspatial domains,there are eight senses for ACROSS,which are derived from the dynamic senses and the static senses respectively.The nonspatial senses derived from the dynamic senses can depict more abundant abstract concepts than those derived from the static senses.The nonspatial senses derived from the dynamic senses are all related to motion,factive and fictive,while the other sense derived from the static senses does not involve motion.There are also linear,arc-shaped and curved paths for the nonspatial senses derived from the dynamic senses.To sum up,the features of the nonspatial senses are nearly identical with those of the spatial senses so that it further confirms that the nonspatial senses come into being based on the spatial senses and physical experience through metaphorical projection.Lastly,from the diachronic perspective,it has been found out that ACROSS has undergone lexical changes for 18 times via metonymy(9 times),metaphor(6 times)and specification(3 times).The semantic changes of ACROSS is accompanied by the shifts of the word classes(3 times).The shift from adverb to preposition is the result of the focal switch and the shift from preposition to adverb is on account of the shift of the different perspectival modes.The shift from adverb to adjective is due to the fact that the salience is transferred from the direction to the result in the same cognitive domain.This paper attempts to conduct a thorough research into ACROSS by analyzing the spatial and nonspatial senses of ACROSS synchronically and diachronically.This cognitive analysis of ACROSS is conducive to English teaching and English learners.It can also help dictionary compiling.