汉字“巴”多义性认知转喻阐释

Cognitive Metonymy in Polysemy of Chinese Character“Ba”

汉字"巴"从甲骨文时期出现距今已有几千年的时间,其语义已发生了巨大的变化。以认知转喻理论作为方法研究汉字"巴"多义范畴的构建,勾画出"巴"从本义"善于攀爬的人"到"爬行"再到"贴近,粘住",最后到"期盼"的这一从具体到抽象的语义扩展轨迹。而转喻正是这一词义演变的重要机制和强大动因,在"巴"的词义演变过程中,发挥着比隐喻更大的作用。该发展轨迹中所涉及到的隐喻过程,也是以转喻为基础的。

The Chinese character“Ba”has experie nced great changes in its semantics for several thousand years since the period of oracle-bone inscriptions . Taking the cognitive metonymy theory as a method of studying Chinese characters“Ba”in the construction of polysemy , this paper outlines the“Ba”from the original meaning of“people who good at climbing”to“crawl”and then to“close to , cling to”. Finally , as the meaning of“looking forward to”, it witnesses the path of changing from concrete con-cepts to abstract ones . However , the metonymy is an important mechanism and strong motivation during this evolution process . During the evolution process of“Ba”, the metonymy plays an more important role than metaphor does . To that end , metaphors involved in this development process are all based on the metonymy .