A Comparative Study Of The Meaning Extension Of English And Chinese Wenjue Words

Temperature-sensation words are primary vocabulary both in English and Chinese,which are frequently-used in people’s daily life.They can be divided into four basic categories:cold/leng,hot/re,warm/wen,cool/liang.These words have extended a lot of meanings during the process of language evolution,making the usages of them quite complicated.The thesis selects semantic domain as a basic unit and makes a comparative study on semantic extension of English and Chinese temperature-sensation words from the perspective of chaos theory and imagery theory of cultural linguistics proposed by Palmer.It is found that many phenomena of semantic extension of temperature-sensation words are influenced by imagery,and embody the characteristics of nonlinearity,bifurcation and the sensitivity to initial condition.The irregular phenomenon and nonadditivity of semantic extension embody the characteristic of nonlinearity.Internal randomness and external disturbance,like mutual influence between English and Chinese within semantic extension system,lead to the constant semantic bifurcation of temperature-sensation words.Small changes in initial meaning of temperature-sensation words may result in unpredictable semantic development or semantic extension in the future.In addition,various semantic expressions of temperature-sensation words are affected by imageries,whose production is largely influenced by a number of cultural factors,such as customs,values and cognitive mode in different countries.Mutual interaction between imagery and culture results in different semantic extension of temperature-sensation words in English and Chinese.Consequently,research on semantic extension from these aspects will be conductive to understand chaotic features of language phenomena and interaction among imagery,culture and language.