본문 바로가기
  • Home

The Aspects and Construals of Semantic Extension of the Body-Part Terms, “Abdomen”, between Chinese and Korean

  • The Journal of Chinese Cultural Studies
  • 2018, (41), pp.191-212
  • DOI : 10.18212/cccs.2018..41.009
  • Publisher : The Society For Chinese Cultural Studies
  • Research Area : Humanities > Chinese Language and Literature > Chinese Literature > Chinese Culture
  • Received : July 16, 2018
  • Accepted : August 17, 2018
  • Published : August 30, 2018

LI NAN 1 Han, Yong Su 2

1山东理工大学
2동국대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The abdomen belongs to a part of the body of the human body, and its related body-part terms can be regarded as “visible, felt” in vitro words; on the other hand, the abdomen includes abdominal wall, abdominal cavity and visceral organs, and it is related to the body words that are “invisible and unable to touch”. Therefore, the body-part terms related to the abdomen are both concrete and abstract. Heine et al.(1991)points out: “the conceptual domain has certain directivity.” This is the shift from the concrete “person” domain to the abstract “quality” domain. On the basis of the conceptual domain of Heine, the semantic extension of the Korean and Chinese body-part terms, “abdomen / belly”, is investigated in the order of person > animal > object > space > quantity > abstract concept domain. Its main contents are as follows. The semantic extension of the Korean body-part term “abdomen” is from the process of person > animal > object > space > quantity > abstract. The Chinese “abdomen” is in accordance with the process of person > animal > object > space > abstract process, and the extension meaning of Korean body word “abdomen” and Chinese body word “abdomen” is greater than difference. In addition to the meaning of “animal production times”, the extended meaning of Korean “abdomen” can be found in Chinese body words containing “abdomen”. However, the semantic extension of Chinese “abdomen” is more abundant in person and abstract domains. In the person domain, the “abdomen” can refer to “the protruding part of the finger or the calf”, and the “abdomen” can be combined with the “heart” for the person that can be trusted because of its functional importance, and the “belly” is able to borrow a pregnant person and a protruding person in the abdomen because of its appearance. In the spatial domain, the position of the abdomen in the body can also refer to “the front” and “the center”. In the process of semantic extension of Korean and Chinese body-part term, the main source of image is its structure, form, position and function. Structural features are more semantically transferred in the human domain itself based on metonymic mechanism of the whole generation. The direct perception of the morphological features is the strongest. It is the most easy to leave the mental image of the form and picture, and it is also the most likely to attract the attention of human to the appearance of other things. But there is no further meaning in terms of morphological characteristics. This is because the features of the morphology are characterized by a very high representational character. The more concrete, the greater the limitation of the development of the word meaning. “position” features like “morphologies” features, with strong intuitive perception, but “positional” features reflect a higher level of abstraction than “morphologies”. The expansion of the abdomen to the spatial domain is precisely because “location” is the spatial relationship between objects. The human abdomen is an important part of the trunk, including the stomach, the intestines, the kidney, the uterus and other visceral organs. Therefore, the human abdomen has the functions of digestion, excretion, and pregnancy, and the abdomen is closely related to the other parts of the body, such as “heart”, to develop into a more advanced abstract domain during the cognitive process. Extend the meaning of heart, idea, emotion, and so on.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.