An Analysis of the Polysemy “HEAD” Based on Prototype Theory

DOI

10.2991/icadce-18.2018.81How to use a DOI?

Keywords

polysemy; prototype theory; “HEAD”

Abstract

As a universal language phenomenon, polysemy shows the economical, creative and flexible features of human language and also reflects the approach people used for cognition. The study of polysemy of human body words can better uncover the process and the ways of semantic extension of human body words and uncover the relation between the deepening of cognition and extension of word meaning on account of the fact that human body words are termed as meta-notion of cognition. Head, one of the most important parts of human body, not only controls human’s mental and physical activities, but is closely related to thoughts. By making an assay of the semantic extension of English polysemy “HEAD” from the perspective of prototype theory in cognitive linguistics, this thesis explores the reasons for its meaning extension and the process of meaning extension, in an attempt to verify the psychological and cognitive processes underlying polysemy proposed by some linguists.

Copyright

© 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yanfang Li
AU  - Yujuan Feng
PY  - 2018/07
DA  - 2018/07
TI  - An Analysis of the Polysemy “HEAD” Based on Prototype Theory
BT  - Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Arts, Design and Contemporary Education (ICADCE 2018)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 386
EP  - 389
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icadce-18.2018.81
DO  - 10.2991/icadce-18.2018.81
ID  - Li2018/07
ER  -