A Cognitive Comparative Study Of The Semantics Of Chinese “kai” And English “open”

The polysemous verbs “kai” and “open” in Chinese and English are frequently used.However,the meanings provided in dictionaries are not sufficient enough in explaining their usages in real discourse.This study is helpful to elucidate how various meanings of a word are connected as a result of prototype effect via conceptual metaphor and metonymy.With data collected from the Chinese corpus BCC and the English corpus COCA,this study constructs the polysemous networks of “kai” and “open” through a qualitative and quantitative analysis.The study further explores the cognitive motivations underlying the semantic similarities and differences between “kai” and“open”,on the basis of Categorization Theory and Conceptual Metaphor Theory.The findings may be summarized as follows:(1)On the basis of the container schema,the meanings of “kai” may be divided into seven categories: “da kai”,“chan sheng”,“kai shi”,“cao zong”,“xian lu”,“shu fang”,and “biao da”.These meanings form the semantic network of “kai”,with “open”as the prototypical meaning,from which other meanings are extended via conceptual metaphor or metonymy.In a similar way,the meanings of “open” may be divided into four categories,namely “make open”,“produce”,“start”,“stretch”.The semantic network of “open” takes “ make open” as the prototypical meaning,from which other meanings are extended via conceptual metaphor.(2)The similarities between “kai” and “open” are found in their prototypical and extended meanings.The differences between “kai” and “open” are manifested in three aspects.First,they differ in meaning type.“kai” has the meanings of “cao zong”,“xian lu”,“shu fang”,and “biao da”.while “open” does not have.Second,they differ in usage.The usages of “kai” and “open” in real discourse are different even within the same meaning category.For example,when expressing the meaning of “open something”,“open” can directly collocate with nouns which belong to the categoriesof machine,correspondence,body organ and etc.,while “kai” can only be used in the verb compound “V+kai”.Third,they differ in frequency.For example,the usage frequency of “kai” is multi-peak prominent while that of “open” is single-peak prominent,indicating the difference in word formation between “kai” and “open”.(3)The semantic similarities and differences between “kai” and “open” reflect similar and different ways of conceptualization between Chinese and English native speakers.First,both tend to choose the controllable parts of objects as profiles.The similar extended meanings in Chinese and English are attributed to the same focus.Second,their semantic differences are manifested in terms of specificity and perspective.For example,when expressing the concept of “open something”,Chinese shows a higher specificity with more detailed features,while English “open” is a generalization in a broader sense.The different meaning types of “kai” and “open”reflect the different perspectives between Chinese and English.Chinese speakers tend to adopt a dynamic viewing perspective and focus on the process of event,while English speakers pay more attention to the action itself.