Polysemy of body part vocabulary and their acquisition

A comparative study of the words "eye" in Japanese and Chinese

Abstract

According to previous studies, body part vocabulary has many possible meanings. It will be a burden on learners if they just recite these meanings unthinkingly. This paper, on the basis of the previous studies, has analyzed the reason for the occurrence of polysemy of body part vocabulary. Along with it addresses differences & commonalities in the semantic extensions of the words "eye" between Japanese & Chinese, and discusses the extension process.As can be seen from Arizono's (2013) study, the words "eye", "ear" and "nose" in Japanese extend their meanings basing on the action frame. This paper verifies that the action frame is also available to body part vocabulary in Chinese. This study not only deepens the understanding and interpretation of the word "eye" but also benefits the lexical learning and teaching.