联想的语义连接功能

由于词的多义性,人们在言语交际中往往不能单凭字面意思来理解其真正的内涵或外延,语境的研究使人们把视野拓展到词的上下文和情境上下文,但有时单凭语境而没有认知主体的联想参与,也不能达到正确理解词语深层语义的目的,因为语义的产生来自语境与认知主体之间的互动,而联想是互动的主要路径.从认知主体来看,联想有其生物基础和心理基础.

The Semantic Connective Function of Association

Owing to the vagueness of words,it is,more often than not,hard for people in communication to understand the exact connotation and extension of a word just by interpreting its literal meaning.The research into the context has contributed to explaining the meaning of a word in the light of its context.However,sometimes the correct understanding of a word meaning cannot be reached without the involvement of its cognitive agent: the person in the capacity of the generation of semantic meaning resulting from the reaction between the semantic field and the cognitive agent,in the course of which association is the main medium.As far as the cognitive agent is concerned,association is grounded with biological,psychological and linguistic theories.Brain science has manifested that the brain is a very complex language parallel processor with a huge parallel processing capacity.The activation of one neuron can make numerous neurons connected to react to and deal with the input language in a split second.Association is a medium of connection between neurons and the activation of them as association binds relevant concepts to form nervous plexus.Psychology regards association as a kind of thinking activity in which the related person(s),thing(s) or concept(s) triggered by other relevant person(s), thing(s) or concept(s) will emerge in the brain.Such kind of thinking activities is an outspread association from a basic point of a person or a thing.From the perspective of linguistics,the meaning of a language bears the property of association,i.e.the morpheme as an independent stimulus induces relevant psychological associations.In other words,lansign can only be connected with its meaning by means of psychological association.It is attempted in this paper to illustrate the semantic connective function of association by means of morphological association,semantic association and contextual association.From daily language usage,it is found that the similar,contrary,and relevant linguistic factors are most likely to intrigue people's semantic association.Stimulated by these factors and affected by his/her personal experience and cultural background,the agent may make a correct semantic matching by means of association to properly understand the inputting language information.Likewise,misunderstanding will occur if his/her semantic association leads to a wrong matching.In other words,despite the same context,language information asymmetry will be formed through improper semantic associations which may result in misinterpretation or misunderstanding.Therefore,lansign,which uses acceptation and context as a means of semantic association,directly influence the process of determining the true semantic meaning.If we say context is the external element which influences our understanding of language,we may then say association is the internal psychological mechanism which manipulates our processing of language.