Cognitive Interpretation of polyseny and it’s Teaching Strategies

摘 要 i

Abstract ii

Chapter1 Introduction 1

Chapter2 Overview of polysemy and Cognitive Semantics 3

2.1 Basic knowledge of polysemy 3

2.2 The main problem of polysemy in pratice 3

2.3 Introduction to Cognitive Semantics 4

Chapter3 Cognitive Interpretation of polysemy 4

3.1 Prototype Theory and polysemy 4

3.2 Metonymy Theory and polysemy 7

3.3 Conceptual Metaphor Theory and polysemy 9

3.4 Study of polysemy through other cognitive Approaches 12

Chapter4 Teaching Strategies on polysemy under the theories of Cognitive Semantics

14

4.1 Metaphor’s Implication to the teaching of polysemy 14

4.2 Teaching in cognitive context 14

4.3 Focusing on basic polysemous words teaching 14

Chapter5 Conclusion 15

Bibliography 17Cognitive Interpretation and teaching strategies of polysemy

Chapter1 Introduction

Polysemy is prevalent in language. It is one of the difficult parts in language learning, especially the learning of the figurative senses of polysemous words. In order to learn polysemy well, the first thing is to have a good grasp of polysemy, which is the basis and prerequisite. In the English language, many high-frequency words are polysemy. Without polyseme, language will lose its practical significance. So it is essential that the methods of learning polysemy should be researched. It is expected that this paper will bring some cognitive Semantics theories for polyseme and solve some problems by exploring the teaching and learning strategies on ployseme, so as to let polyseme learning and teaching more effective. These methods and strategies can not only help students improve their learning skills, but also enhance both teacher’s and student’s understanding of polysemy and promote their English teaching and learning skills.

The intention of this paper is to explore the cognitive methods of polysemy and the teaching and learning strategies on it. It will be shown in five parts and they are as follows:

Firstly, the author will study the former researchers’ contributions to the Cognitive Study of polysemy, investigate and analyze the learning status of polysemy and methods of polysemy. Then, on the basis of those empirical thesis and research reports, the author will summarize the effective teaching and learning strategies and study of polysemy through other cognitive approaches. Secondly, the author will combine the procedures closely with the actual polysemy teaching and learning process and explore Prototype Theory and Conceptual Metaphor Theory, and then according to learning experience of polysemy, sum up the effective learning method of polysemy. Through the Cognitive Semantics Study of polysemy, elaborate organization of polysemy teaching, learning activities, the effective strategies will be shown in the process of teaching. In the end, the methods of learning polysemy will be further optimized. Based on all this above, this paper will be finished completely.

Chapter2 Overview of polysemy and Cognitive Semantics

2.1 Basic knowledge of polysemy

   Polysemy comes from Neo-Latin polysemia,which comes from Greek polusemous giving us a linguistic term,"having many meanings or multiple meanings".

When we talk about polysemy,we always say the same one word may have more than one meaning. For example, the word “bank”, when we say it, we may refer to the place where we save or withdraw money. We may also mean the part of the river. This kind of words is what we call polysemy, and such a word is called a polysemous word. Polysemy is not only an important and general language Phenomenon，but also one of the features of English vocabulary.The meanings of polysemy are many and varied, however, one of the meanings is closely related to other meaning. Such as“mouth of a river ”and“mouth of an animal”. There are close relations between two meanings, so mouth is a polysemy. Polysemy is an essential feature of a language's economy and flexibility.In a meaning change, shift in application was the primary cause of polysemy." handsome" always describe a man’s facial features. When we say "a handsome sum of money", the meaning is "quite a few".Thus it can be seen that polysemy has many different meaning between the two language environment, because of the shift in application.