论文总字数：33167字

摘 要

英语和汉语中都有很丰富的植物词语。由于英汉历史、文化背景和传统习俗的不同，不仅不同植物词语有不同的联想意义，而且相同植物词语的联想意义也不同。本文首先分别阐述植物词语和联想意义的定义，然后主要从两方面比较英汉植物词语的联想意义：相同植物词语的联想意义和不同植物词语的联想意义。相同植物词语的联想意义包括相同的联想意义和不同的联想意义；不同植物词语的联想意义也包括相同的联想意义和不同的联想意义。同时，本文也讨论了语义空缺，即：仅存英语中或汉语中的植物词语的联想意义。最后得出结论：通过英汉植物词语联想意义的对比研究，可以使学习者更好的掌握和运用含有英语植物词语的各种固定表达，提高跨文化交际的应用能力。

关键词：对比研究；英汉植物词语；联想意义；跨文化交际

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. Associative Meaning and Plant Words 2

3.1 Definition of Associative Meaning 2

3.2 Cognition of Plant Words 3

3.3 Cognition of Associative Meaning of Plant Words 4

4. Associative Meaning of the Same Plant Words in Chinese and English 5

4.1 The Same Associative Meaning and Causes 5

4.2 The Different Associative Meaning and Causes 7

5. Associative Meaning of the Different Plant Words in Chinese and English 10

5.1 The Same Associative Meaning and Cause 10

5.2 The Different Associative Meaning and Cause 11

6. Semantic Lap and Causes 12

6.1 Semantic Lap 12

6.2 Cause 14

7. Conclusion 14

Works Cited 16

1. Introduction

Language is the carrier and transmitter of culture. “Language is the archives of history”, Ralpah Waldo Emerson is telling us that “it is impossible to separate our use of language from our culture because language is not only a form of preserving culture but also a means of sharing culture. Language is an organized, generally agreed-upon and learned symbol system that is used to represent the experiences within a cultural community (Dai Weidong, 2009: 7).” Vocabulary is the most basic, sensitive and active part of the language. Vocabulary, as the most fundamental part of culture, is influenced inevitably by culture. Vocabulary is loaded with specific language and culture, and culture can be reflected in the vocabulary. There are lots of plant words in English and Chinese languages such as grass, apple, pine, rose, peach and willow. These plant words may have the same or different associative meanings (Liu Yongjuan, 2007: 177). The associative meaning is the additional or underlying meaning of the word. Associative meaning is a semantic world built by people who use the psychological method like symbolization and analogy based on the conceptual meaning in their long-term practices in language. Associative meaning is engendered when people impose the connotative meaning like safety and danger, kindness and evil and beauty and ugliness to the words in a specific cultural context where they summarize their perceptual knowledge and emotional experience in external world. The associative meaning of word is a general term. It is produced by the language users who are affected by the national culture and traditional edification. Being divorced from the specific cultural background, this association may not exist or mutate (Yang Yuangang, 2002: 74).”

It serves us great purpose to make acquaintance with cultural characteristics of English and Chinese nations by studying the associative meaning of plant words in these two nations; furthermore, it plays an indispensable role in English teaching and intercultural communication. People will make mistakes in communicating on condition that we do not understand the associative meaning of the word. It is easy to cause the semantic transfer and give rise to the failure of communication.

Literature Review

Fan Xiurong has written a thesis---A Comparative Study of Associative Meaning of Words in English and Chinese, which introduced the definition of the associative meaning of words (Fan Xiurong, 2005: 53). Leech’s semantics work is the earliest book, from which we are in contact with the associative meaning (Leech, 1997: 296).

Yang Yuangang has analyzed the associative meaning of plant words from three parts: semantic overlap, semantic mismatch and semantic lap. Semantic overlap means the overlap of associative meanings of plant words. One plant word is possessed of the same literal meaning both in English and Chinese, but there’s a great difference between the associative meanings. This is the definition of semantic mismatch. Semantic lap means associative meaning of plant words only in Chinese or in English language. He enumerated a few examples to explain his point of views Such as laurel, peach, willow, and apple (Yang Yuangang, 2002: 74).

Wang Yanru’s article expressed the factors of forming the different associative meanings of plant words in Chinese and English languages. They are mode of thinking, aesthetic, and history (Wang Yanru, 2007: 232). And Pan Le explained the causes from environments and system of phonetics and semantics (Pan Le, 2008: 169).

Fan Jin has explained the influence of associative meaning of plant words on intercultural communication (Fan Jin, 2009: 247).

Foreign countries are comparatively lack of the discussions about this title. What’s more, in domestic, scholars are lack of studying the factors of forming the same associative meaning of plant words. And this thesis supplements this part.

3. Associative Meaning and Plant Words

3.1 Definition of Associative Meaning

According to the semantics work written by Leech, semantics is divided into seven types. They are conceptual meaning, connotative meaning, social meaning, affected meaning, thematic meaning, collocative meaning and reflected meaning, among of which, the five types belong to associative meaning. They are connotative meaning, social meaning, affected meaning, collocative meaning and reflected meaning.

The connotative meaning is an additional meaning of words other than the conceptual meaning of the words. It is kind of perception of person on someone or something. It is the subjective opinion of people and varies with different individuals.

The social meaning means the social environment of linguistic performance. It contains time, dialect, mood and characteristics etc.

The affected meaning is the meaning of reflecting speakers’ or writers’ feelings and attitudes. Due to the fame and profit, people may add their own subjective feelings in the course of cognizing the things when they get touch with and are acquainted with the objective things and phenomena. These subjective feelings become the evaluation scale of the feeling and become a component added to semantic. We named the component as affected meaning.

The collocative meaning is suitable for using in the context. It is delivered by the association of the words appear at the same time. Distinctive features are produced by the fixed combination of the word.

The reflected meaning is the meaning which is passed through the association of another meaning of the same word (Leech, 1997: 296).

3.2 Cognition of Plant Words

Plants originally don’t have the names. Their names are summed up in human survival environments by human who use their five sense organs to observe plants’ figures, listen to their voices, smell their scents, taste their flavors and touch their surfaces (Chen Hui, 2012: 11).

People can communicate with those plant words only if they are endowed with names. We always want to use a name to call one plant or a kind of plants when we mention them. The scientific name of plant is a universal name, which is named after Latin. The local name is formed in people’s life. Compared with the scientific names, people prefer to use the local names of plants, because people are familiar with the local names of plants. And the local names are easy to communicate and remember in people’s daily life.

The origin of the plant words come from many aspects.

First, it is named according to the plants’ figures, colors and features. Gladiolus’s Chinese name is “Tang Chang Pu”. It is also called “Jian Lan”. In the eyes of ancient Romans, the flower spikes and leaf shape are similar with the sword in gladiator’s hand. So it is called gladiolus

Second, it is named according to the plants’ habitats and habits. Sunflowers grow toward the sun. Rosemary is evolved from Latin name (ros marinus). Ros means dew and marinus means marine. Because the old people often saw it in the sea cliff in the south of France.

Third, it is named according to the stories and fables. In Greek mythology, Narcissus was a beautiful young, but he only loved himself and didn’t love others. Echo bared her heart to Narcissus, but he rejected her. Echo became thin and pallid day after day. At last, her body disappeared and left her voice echoing in the mountains. In order to punish Narcissus, Aphrodite let him have a crush on his reflection in the water. Finally, he was died of haggardness. After his death, he became a narcissus.

Except three aspects mentioned above, there are many other aspects such as the plants’ smell like balsam pear, tuberose and foeniculum vulgare, the plants’ growing seasons and regulars like wintersweet and cymbidium and the plants’ positions and origins like crocuses and croton.

3.3 Cognition of Associative Meaning of Plant Words

China was an agricultural country since ancient times; plants are the friends for people to survive. Britain has a long history of agriculture and animal husbandry, vegetation widely distributed and the type is abundant. Therefore, associative meaning attached to the plants in dependence on its features about appearance, smell, habit of growth and social function.

The plant is the judgment of sense and perception. The plant word is the concept of psychological perception. The associative meaning of plant words is the production produced by cultural perception. They stand in independent existence and achieve a subtle integration. If a kind of plant is not capable of educing plant word, that is to say, it is not possessed of history and can’t reflect the conceptual meaning. As a result, there’s no possibility that plants can be utilized and spread. The plant words without associative meaning are lack of the traces of society and culture, and they just have the conceptual meaning and don’t have the characteristics. At the basic of reflecting conceptual meaning, plant words with associative meaning are saturated with specific national culture, which stimulates people’s interest in utilizing, tasting and studying of plants from different countries (Chen Hui, 2012: 119).

4. Associative Meaning of the Same Plant Words in Chinese and English

4.1 The Same Associative Meaning and Causes

4.1.1 The same associative meaning

It is not a coincidence that the same plant word causes the same associative meaning. It is decided by the similarities of the English and Chinese cultures. These two nations share to some extent similarities in terms of their natural living environments and cognitive mentalities. The associative meaning and comprehensive meaning of this kind of words are the same. Language convergence phenomenon will not affect the cross-cultural communication. The overlapped association may be total, or may be partial (Zhang Boming, 2007: 491).

(Same associative meaning of the same plant words)

Here, we take laurel, peach and oak as the examples.

In Chinese and English cultures, laurel is the symbol of victory and glory. The laurel was woven into a laureate to dedicate to the highest honorable people by the ancient Yue people in Fujian. The Greeks also use the laurel branches to making laureate, which was awarded to the winner of the competition. In English “win/ gain laurels” means “gain glory”. “Rest on one’s laurels” means “be content with the present achievements”. “Look to one’s laurels” means “with the great care to keep present glory (Zhou Yanxian, 2008: 123)”.

Peach is a kind of common fruit with pink skin. It is easy to think of the girl from the peach. China and England use the peach to refer to the beautiful and young girl. In English, “she is really a peach” means “she is a beautiful and attractive girl”. Peach also can refer to the good things. “A peach of a room” means “a nice room”.

“Oak tree is tall and upright, and its quality of material is solid. In Chinese, oak tree is used metaphorically as a man who is forceful in will. For example, “to oak” which is a work of the famous female poet Shu Ting has a metaphor that oak tree is like her love. And in English oak is a symbol of brave man. “A heart of oak” means the one who is indomitable and the hero. “Oak may bent but will not break” means people should be as forceful as the oak (Zhou Huayuan, 2011: 82).”

4.1.2 Causes

Chinese and English live in the same planet and they are affected by the same regular pattern of nature and are surrounded by the same natural substances. These common things bring a similar impression or arouse similar associations to people. These similar impressions and associations consist of the same metaphoric body and metaphoric meaning. The Chinese and English cultures belong to the different systems. But the same thing or phenomenon causes similar cultural associations, which are shown in their daily life. For example, a drop in the ocean (沧海一粟）. In English and Chinese Metaphors, people connect the specific images of the entities with the unknown things and use the solid word portray vision, sense of taste, sense of smell,sense of touch and other images and describe or modify the abstracts or the unknown things.

In Chinese:

1. 他骨瘦如材。

2. 她面若桃花。

3. 他命如草芥。

In English:

1. My love is like a red, red rose.

2. She is a virgin, a most unspotted lily．

3. She is a real daisy.

What’s more, there are similarities of aesthetical discourse in these two nations. When people don’t want to say something with taboos such as disease and disability, age and appearance and poverty and crime, but they have to point out the things clearly. They will use the good words to replace or metaphor to suggest. This is a common language phenomenon in English and Chinese languages. As long as it is not suitable to say something, people will take a roundabout and implicative way to express ideas and exchange information (Zhang Zhihua, 2007: 169).

4.2 Different Associative Meanings and Causes

4.2.1 Different associative meanings

Chinese and English, as the children of different cultures, from the very beginning have been endowed with their respective cultural contents. Even some concepts in two languages seem to be similar in literal meanings, but they are quite apart in the aspect of associative meanings. The word in the two languages representing the same plant has quite different associative meanings.

(Different associative meanings of the same plant words)

Here, we take willow and lotus as the examples.

In English and Chinese cultures, the willow represents sadness. In Chinese, willow is on behalf of parting. It is caused by parting not death. Willow used to describe women’s slender eyebrows and slim figures. Willow also refer to “prostitute” such as “寻花问柳”“花柳门户”“花街柳巷”. In English, willow mostly refers to the “lovelorn” “death” “mourning”. It is caused by death. Due to the old people wear willow wreath to express condolences. So in English, “wear the willow” means “mourning” and “losing a beloved person”.

In Chinese culture, people like lotus because of its color and elegant figure. Lotus usually indicate the feet of women, For example “三寸金莲”. Lotus is the symbol of honest and upright and noble. In English, according to legend, people who eat lotus will forget his friends, relatives and the way back home. He will stay at the land of milk and honey, do not care about the things happened around himself.

4.2.2 Causes

剩余内容已隐藏，请支付后下载全文，论文总字数：33167字