| Ambivalent words refer to a group of words which,in the synchronic case,contains two opposite meanings.This phenomenon is found in many languages all over the world,such as English,Russian,French,German and Latin.Ambivalent word is a special case in human thinking,which,together with other meaning phenomenon such as “synonyms” or “antonyms”,constitutes the diversity of meaning relations of words.However,compared with other studies about meanings,there are few studies on ambivalent words which are relatively one-sided and not enough.Because of it,this thesis uses Image Schema of cognitive linguistics to analyze semantic changes in English and Chinese.This thesis discusses cognitive mechanisms of forming process of ambivalent words in English and Chinese,and finds some similarities and differences in order to have a deeper understanding of the language phenomenon.It is found that meaning formation of ambivalent words is a reflection of people’s experience and conceptualization of the world.It is related to people’s understanding of events.For one thing or an action,people highlight the opposite features,choose different perspectives,or grasp different levels of specificity,thus forming images schemas with two opposite meanings.These two opposite image schemas are represented in the same word.As far as English and Chinese ambivalent words are concerned,their common ground lies in two cognitive mechanisms: metonymy and metaphor.The differences are that some words are influenced by local culture and regional factors,there are a few cognitive dissimilarities.The thesis analyzes ambivalent words in English and Chinese by using the theory of Image Schema,which strengthens the theoretical interpretation of ambivalent words,relatively widens the research scope of Image Schema,enriches the knowledge of cognitive theory to a certain extent.This study is also of great practical significance in teaching English and Chinese,translation and some language arts(crosstalk). |
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