Meaning Extensions, Word Component Structures and Their Distribution: Linguistic Usages Containing Body-Part Terms Liǎn/Miàn, Yǎn/Mù and Zuǐ/Kǒu in Taiwan Mandarin

Abstract

This study analyzes and compares the linguistic expressions of three sets of body-part terms extracted from the largest, balanced and widely-used Mandarin Chinese corpus, and aims to find their actual usage patterns in the real world context of Mandarin Chinese. It is found that PERSON and EMOTION are the most prevalent metonymic meaning in the six body part terms. As for the metonymic and metaphorical meanings in the six body-part terms and their corresponding word component structures, it is found that when the body-part terms denote PERSON, the most dominant word component structure is [NN]$_{\mathrm N}$; when they denote EMOTION, [NN]$_{\mathrm N}$ and [VN]$_{\mathrm V}$ are the most dominant structures. In addition, the [NN]$_{\mathrm N}$ structure shows the highest frequency of occurrences in all the six body part terms when they are used metaphorically.