從認知語言學角度分析漢字

Abstract

Traditional Chinese paleography, from the Han dynasty, people had sorted Chinese characters in six categories with different methods. This paper attempts to analyze them in terms of iconicity, metaphor and metonymy, and other related concepts in cognitive linguistics. For the purpose of this study, Chinese characters with phonetic radicals will be excluded. Peirce (1932) semiology was used in this study. According to his theory, signs could be roughly distinguished into three categories – icons, indexes and symbols. However, most Chinese characters have more than one sign, and those signs are in different categories. Therefore, the characters with both icons and indexes are redefined as “combined icons”, and the characters with only one icon are called as “simple icons” in this research. After this adjustment, Chinese characters would be put into three new categories – simple icons, combination icons and symbols. In the redefined theory, the character “人 (ren)” imitating one person is a simple icon, and “杲 (gao)” as well as “刃 (ren)” are combined icons. The combined icons may carry meanings different from the meanings of composing components. Character without transparent associative meanings are treated as symbols. The meaning of Chinese characters can be metonymy and metaphor. For instance, the Chinese character “見 (jian)” uses icon of eyes to represent the action of seeing, and this is metonymy. Another example, the metaphorical character “朋 (peng)”, a pair of shells indicates friends. Cognitive linguistics is adopted as a theoretical orientation in this study to understand the nature of Chinese characters.