The Polysemy Analysis Of HOLD From The Perspective Of Cognitive Linguistics

This paper attempts to analyze the polysemy of the verb HOLD by using some main theories of cognitive linguistics,they are prototype and category theory,conceptual metaphor,image schema,idealized cognitive model,trajector and landmark theory as well as polysemy network When these theories are applied to analyze the cognitive mechanism of HOLD,their explanatory power in semantic application is further verified.Based on the research,this thesis combines qualitative method and quantitative method.Firstly,23 meanings are collected from Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary(6th edition,2004),Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English(4th edition,2004)and Macmillan English Dictionary For Advanced Learners,(2nd edition,2003).Then 2000 sentences containing HOLD,HELD,HOLDS,HOLDING which are used as verbs are randomly selected from COCA.Next,on the basis of conceptual metaphor,all the meanings are divided into literal meanings(basic meaning and elaborations)and metaphorical meanings,including one basic meaning,nine elaborations and fourteen metaphorical meanings.Finally,this paper focuses on how the metaphorical meaning of HOLD is generated on the basis of prototype meaning,and uses polysemy network to construct the scatter lattice of meaning category of HOLD to further explain it.The results show that the word meaning extension of HOLD is mainly metaphorical radiation type,interwoven with chain type.This study uses these theories to explain the semantic extension mechanism of HOLD,while this kind of extension mechanism further proves the cognitive linguistic theory.Each meaning of a word is the result of human beings’ experience in the objective world during the diachronic development of language.Then it is concluded that human’s knowledge about the world is based on the philosophy of embodiment and they usually use known and familiar things to perceive and understand unknown things.