英文摘要 |
This study aims to explore the semantic relationships between the word xǐ “to wash”, a polysemous verb of high frequency usage in Mandarin Chinese, and its associated lexicalized words/culture-specific phrases. Using the notions of Conceptual Metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson 1980/2003), Metonymy, and Conceptual Blending (Turner & Fauconnier 1995) theories as our basis for analysis, we are able to uncover the network of basic and extended meanings of xǐ as well as its extended words. We have also refined Xing’s (2011) “Teaching Principles of Lexicon” and proposed a new teaching sequence targeting different bisyllabic words of xǐ “to wash” for the referential use in compiling Chinese instructional materials.The results of this study are four folds. First, analysis of our corpus search result shows that the core concept of xǐ is “WASHING IS CHANGING, namely TO WASH IS TO CHANGE FROM THE STATE OF BEING DIRTY TO THE STATE OF BEING CLEAN.” Our corpus data validates the argument of “CHANGE (the object)” being the core and the prototypical conceptual meaning of xǐ “to wash.” We then follow to propose four main conceptual principles from the prototypical meaning of xǐ to explain the relevancy of the conceptual meaning for the following words: xǐlǐ “to baptize”, xǐqián “to launder money”, xǐjié “to loot”, and xǐxīngémiàn “to turn over a new leaf.” Given the derived conceptual principles, we suggest the following teaching sequence for bisyllabic words of xǐ: xǐnǎo “to be brainwashed” > xǐlǐ “to baptize” > xǐpái “to shuffle; to rearrange” > xǐchén “to give a welcoming party.” Lastly, we propose a practical pedagogical guideline using metaphor and image schema in vocabulary teaching and learning. |