Linguistics and Literature Studies Vol. 4(5), pp. 362 - 370
DOI: 10.13189/lls.2016.040508
Reprint (PDF) (329Kb)

A Study on Metaphoricity of Duck across Word Classes with Wmatrix and BNCweb Combined — Implications for Learning of Polysemous Words

Xu Huanrong ^*
Foreign Language School, Shanghai Ocean University, China

ABSTRACT

This paper combines Wmatrix with BNCweb to look at the grammar of linguistic metaphors formed by concrete nouns and their derivatives across word classes in order to shed light on learning of polysemous words. The methodology is to search different word classes of such a noun in BNCweb, use the concordances to construct corpus data and upload the data to Wmatrix for semantic domain tagging, choose the self-contained corpus in Wmatrix — British English 2006 — for a reference corpus to do the frequency comparison, then study the resultant key semantic tags as clues to identify the source domains of metaphor. The underlying idea of Cognitive Metaphor Theory, the Great Chain of Being and the semantic makeup of a concept will help with the identification of a metaphor. The case study on duck shows the detailed process and feasibility of the research method. The research results reveal how different meanings of a concrete noun are related by metaphor or metonymy, which facilitates the learning of polysemous words.

KEYWORDS
Wmatrix, BNCweb, Metaphor, Word Classes, Polysemy, Learning

Cite This Paper in IEEE or APA Citation Styles
(a). IEEE Format:
[1] Xu Huanrong , "A Study on Metaphoricity of Duck across Word Classes with Wmatrix and BNCweb Combined — Implications for Learning of Polysemous Words," Linguistics and Literature Studies, Vol. 4, No. 5, pp. 362 - 370, 2016. DOI: 10.13189/lls.2016.040508.

(b). APA Format:
Xu Huanrong (2016). A Study on Metaphoricity of Duck across Word Classes with Wmatrix and BNCweb Combined — Implications for Learning of Polysemous Words. Linguistics and Literature Studies, 4(5), 362 - 370. DOI: 10.13189/lls.2016.040508.