Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
English, the most efficient tool and widely used language in the world, has gainedimportance and already become a fashion. Especially with the amazing development oftechnology, economy and science, national communications and trades in many areasare becoming more and more frequent, so a great number of people concentrate onEnglish study. A language is composed of three important elements--sound, grammarand vocabulary, of which vocabulary is weighed as the “building block”. In China,definition-plus-example model is popular in vocabulary teaching in most colleges anduniversities; thus seldom are the deeper and abstract meaning of the words stressed, notmention the productive use of words idiomatically.English is such a tolerant language that it borrows words from other languages,which is one of the causes of a large number of polysemes. The meanings of some bigand not-commonly-used words confuse the students. The English majors feel muchpressured to study English well, to gain more certificates related with TEM4 or 8. Theproblem is though they are English majors, few can make use of the words productivelyand flexibly in practice.The new curriculum requirement especially makes some demand in vocabularycompetence and vocabulary quantity. However, some problems in the contemporarysituation of vocabulary teaching, such as low-efficiency and time waste still exist. Sohow to make the students remember more words in a set time and use the words exactlyis an issue high on the agenda for English vocabulary teaching. Even though we cannotdeny the great importance of traditional method of vocabulary teaching, we can notneglect that new linguistic theories are of some instructive effects to renew our teachingmethod.
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1.2 Framework of This Thesis
This thesis gives a tentative study of prototype theory in cognitive semantics，including lexical polysemy from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. The currentstudy will take the advantage of the prototype theory, especially basic-level categorieswithin the framework of cognitive semantics to analyze the English words, focusing onthe relationships which hold among different senses of a linguistic form. The thesis alsotargets to find out the inherent relationship between basic level words and itssuperordinate and subordinate words, derivates as well as polysemous words teachingand learning. It consists of five chapters:Chapter one introduces the background of the study, research objective andsignificance and the overall structure of the thesis.Chapter two outlines the current situation of vocabulary teaching, somebackground information about the vocabulary teaching methods and learning strategies,and how it is related with basic level words and polysemy teaching and learning. Thetheoretical base of the study is also introduced in this part which starts from Aristotle’sClassical Theory of Categorization to the development of prototype theory.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Category and Categorization
We may as well approach this topic by citing a significant quotation from WilliamLabov, which is also the start of John Taylor’s Linguistic Categorization, “If linguisticscan be said to be any one thing, it is the study of categories: that is, the study of howlanguage translates meaning into sound through the categorization of reality into unitsand sets of units.”[Labov. W. 1973. The boundaries of words and their meanings. In C.Bailey & R. Shuy, New Ways of Analyzing Variation in English. Georgetown UniversityPress, p.342 ]If linguistics is anything, Labov explained in his book, it is the study of categories.That is through the categorization of reality, how language translates meaning intosound and sets of units. To put it simply, in reality , actually there are no categorizes orunits about what we perceive. It is we, the speakers, who categorizes the world aroundus. Strictly speaking, two things, two events, two individuals are
