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Article published In: Terminology
Vol. 31:2 (2025) ► pp.267–310

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A corpus-based cognitive linguistic analysis of taste terms

The case of English Sour and Chinese suan

ORCiD logo with link | Universiti Sains MalaysiaPulau Pinang
 | Universiti Sains MalaysiaPulau Pinang
 | Universiti Sains MalaysiaPulau Pinang
Published online: 10 February 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/term.23033.zha
Abstract
From a cognitive linguistic perspective, this article delves into the polysemy between the English term sour and its Chinese counterpart suan. The research aims to achieve two key objectives: (1) To explore the similarities and differences in the polysemy of sour in English and suan in Chinese; (2) To identify the cognitive mechanisms that motivate the semantic expansion of sour in English and suan in Chinese. To this end, 《汉语大词典》 (the Great Chinese Dictionary), The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the British National Corpus (BNC), and the Centre for Chinese Linguistics (CCL) Chinese-English Parallel Corpus were used. The dictionaries are utilized to explore the polysemy of sour and suan, while the BNC and CCL Chinese-English Parallel Corpus are employed to investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying the semantic extensions of the selected terms. Theoretically, this article draws upon the conceptual metaphor and metonymy theory proposed by Lakoff and Johnson. The findings reveal significant semantic overlap between sour in English and suan in Chinese, yet notable distinctions remain. This study has implications for vocabulary teaching as well as cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Related literature
  • Method
  • Results and discussion
    • The Polysemy of Sour and Suan
    • The Distribution of Meanings of Suan and Sour in the Corpora
    • The conceptual metaphors on Sour and Suan
    • The common conceptual metaphors of Sour and Suan
    • The Unique Metaphors of Sour
    • The Unique Metaphors of Suan
    • The Conceptual Metonymies of Sour and Suan
    • The Metaphtonymy (metonymy within metaphor) of Sour and Suan
    • The Metaphtonymy (Metonymy within Metaphor) of Sour
    • The Metaphtonymy (Metonymy within Metaphor) of Suan
    • The summary of the rules and paths for expanding the meaning of Sour and Suan
    • Comparison of meanings of Sour and Suan in dictionaries and corpora
  • Conclusion
  • References
References (76)
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