Title:
A COGNITIVE SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF THE POLYSEMY OF THE CHARACTER SHÀNG “ON/OVER” IN MANDARIN CHINESE

Authors:
Yi Chen, China

Abstract:
This paper investigates the polysemy of the Chinese character shàng?“on/over” through the lens of Lakoff’s Image Schema and Radial Categories theories. In Mandarin Chinese, spatial expressions like shàng “on/over” exhibit diverse interpretations including static senses and dynamic senses, with the former revealing the information about the position of a person or an object while the latter indicating the motion. In addition to the concrete senses, they also manifest a range of abstract senses. Considering both the static and dynamic states of the senses of the character shàng?“on/over”, this study provides an in-depth analysis over the relationships between its core meanings and extended meanings through human’s cognitive processes, including adding information to the central schema and applying metaphorical extensions. As a result, two radial structures (one for the static senses, and the other for dynamic senses of shàng“on/over”) are obtained, demonstrating that the senses that are closer to the core are more prototypical, with the spatial meanings at the center and the non-spatial meanings radiating outward to the periphery.