중국어 해음(諧音)의 인지 과정 고찰

Abstract

This study began with the curiosity about the cognitive process concerning how homophonic words are produced and understood. First, in terms of the form and structure of the language, this study considered Chinese homophonic words the realization of intra-sentential code-switching and examined their types, dividing them into replacement type and variation type according to the embedded language. Code-switching of homophonic words is realized in the boundaries of various categories, such as the phoneme, morpheme, word, phrase, and sentence between Chinese mandarin vocabularies, between mandarin and dialect, between Chinese and English or between Chinese and number. According to the aspect, this study investigated them, dividing the replacement type into misspelled word, homonymous construction, dialect, number replacement and English replacement and the variation type into reduction type and imitation type. Moreover, with a conceptual blending theory in cognitive linguistics as the ground of interpretation, this study analyzed the cognitive process of the production and understanding of homophonic words, focusing on ‘杯具(bēijù)-悲剧(bēijù)’, ‘海龟(hǎiguī)-海归(hǎiguī)’ and ‘BC-白痴(báichī),’ centering around of the examples introduced in the above classification of the types. In general, it was noted that the phenomenon of homophonic words went through the cognitive process as follows: “Detection of homophonic words → Association mediated by the similarity of pronunciation → Extraction of the original character → Construction of conceptual influences → connection of the conceptual influences through cross-space mapping → Formation of a blended space through projection → Emphasis of an emergent structure through a conceptual blending process → Production and understanding of homophonic words.”