基于认知语言学的多义词意义习得实证研究——以over及其合成词和动词短语为例

CL-based Empirical Studies of Semantic Acquisition of Polysemous Words: The Case of Over

本实验以两组非英语专业一年级大学新生为研究对象,以over及其作为词缀构成的合成词和作为小品词构成的动词短语为习得目标词,通过定量定性研究法考察认知语言学教学法介入多义词教学对学习者习得多义词多义的效果,即意义的深度理解和记忆长期保持,同时考察接受认知语言学教学法干预的受试在认知策略方面自动识别多义词各个义项间语义理据和进行语义推理两个维度的可行性。结果表明,实验组在多义习得效果、识别多义衍生认知理据及其语义推理的认知策略迁移方面明显优于基于传统翻译教学法的对照组,其教学启示是,应用认知语言学所倡导的识解、意象图式、概念隐喻和概念合成理论教学多义词,确定多义词的核心意义,分析各个义项衍生的认知理据不但有助于学习者习得实质意义,还附带习得了认知策略,并且能够自动迁移策略推理其他多义词的词义。

Taking two groups of non-English major freshmen as the subjects, and over(and its derivatives-- compounds and phrases) as the target words, the quantitative and qualitative empirical study investigates the effectiveness of CLinspired instructional methods which exploit the notion of semantic motivation and the possibility of translating the insights and principles of CL pedagogy into a strategy for autonomous learning and independently inferring the meanings of novel polysemous words. The findings demonstrate that the CL-inspired pedagogical approach significantly improves the in-depth understanding and meaning retention of the target polysemous words and help the experimented subjects acquire the cognitive strategies which can be transferred to figure out the semantic motivation of polysemous words much better than the controlled group which receives the translation-based instruction. Meanwhile, drawing on such CL theories as construal, image-schema and its transformation, conceptual metaphor and conceptual blending, the CL pedagogy strongly advocates the feasibility of both meaning acquisition and by-product strategies, and the significance of first of all pinning down the core sense of the polysemous words which serves as the starting point to reproduce the other meaning items as the learners' mental representation of the newly-acquired meaning items is implicitly followed by the core sense representation which aids in appreciation and identification of semantic motivation and application of strategy transfer.