Some lin-guists believe that polysemy is a result of human cognition and assert that a wordmeaning is an open system which is subject to change and evolution． Ullmann insiststhat metaphors are the main motivation of the senses，the source of polysemy． Meta-phorical mappings can occur between one source domain and multiple target domains．This kind of mapping may be located in the knowledge structure of the source do-main． Therefore，the normal and ordinary lexicon of source domain is not always nor-mal and ordinary． If the ordinary word in the source domain cannot find its normalcounterpart in the target domain through mapping，a new sense will pop up and theprocess of polysemization begins． While metaphor is one of the most important instru-ments to recognize the world，studies of polysemy in terms of metaphor centered on theanalysis of concrete words are rare．On the other hand，the typical body word“head”was studied by some Chinesescholars，such as Zhu Ning，Chen Jie，Dong Yinyan，英语论文范文，etc． But little studies about inter-preting the polysemy of head in terms of metaphor have been done．This paper，aiming at interpreting the polysemy of head in terms of metaphor，in-tends to figure out how polysemy comes into being and how meanings are extended．We hope that will shed some light on the researches of polysemous words．
Ⅱ． Ploysemy
The word“polysemy”is original from Greek，which was first introduced in nine-teenth － century semantics by Breal as part of his study on meaning change — a fieldof study which provided a major impetus for the study of semantics． Different scholarshave different definitions toward“polysemy”． Taylor defined polysemy as“the associ-ation of two or more related senses with a single linguistic form ”． According toFromkin，polysemy was referred as a word that had multiple senses related conceptu-ally or historically． Heine tried to define polysemy by means of three criteria． ( 1 )There are two or more different but related senses; ( 2) and these senses are associatedwith one linguistic form only; ( 3) the linguistic form belongs to one and the same mor-pho － syntactic category in its uses．Since metaphor plays an important role in the process of polysemization，we candefine polysemy as a process，when the ordinary word in the source domain cannotfind its normal counterpart in the target domain through mapping． In this way，an indi-vidual word or phrase can be used to express two or more different meanings．Being a central concern of semantics，polysemy was dealt with from different per-spectives by different linguistics schools． One view is resemblance category． The cen-tral meaning is regarded as the prototype，and the other meanings extended from it．The other two views are abstraction and homonymy． The abstraction view claims thatthere is a general and abstract concept of a word and the precise meaning of the wordis made out by context in conjunction with pragmatic knowledge． The homonymy viewfavors the correspondence between one word form and one word meaning and opposesbringing derivative meanings through metaphorical uses and other similar rhetoricaldevices under a single word form． Both the abstraction and the homonymy views favormonosemy，which holds that each word form is associated with a single meaning．
Ⅲ． Metaphor
Metaphor has been a major concern amon，英语论文题目 |
