文档介绍：I Acknowledgements Many people have made invaluable contributions, both directly and indirectly, to my research. I feel deep gratitude to all those who have offered me support, help and encouragement during my study in Jiangsu University of Science and Technology. First of all, I am obliged to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Professor Zhao Xia who has given me a lotof guidance in my study of cognitive linguistics, and made painstaking efforts to instruct me in the thesis-writing. Her kindness and efficiency will definitely exert profound influence on my future life and work. My deep thanks must go to Professor Cheng Shanzhen, Professor Zhou Shujun, Professor Ge Jihong , Professor Dai Yuqun, Professor Zhang Hongyan, Professor Xia Ganlin and Professor Jiang Wei, for their instructive lectures that I have attended. I should also express my genuine gratitude to my wife , my classmates and roommates who have helped me during these years. Last but not least, the thesis owes its existence, toa large extent, toa large body of related materials. My bibliography, in this respect can be regarded as the most genuine act of thanks to the authors of those materials. Abstract II Abstract Lexical polysemy is the most pervasive and the most important semantic phenomenon in English. Therefore, it has been the focus of linguists ’ researches. The traditional studies are confined to the external reasons that cause the changes of meanings of polysemous words without taking account of their underlying cognitive mechanisms. They fail to reveal the essential nature of polysemous words. The polysemous phenomenon has attracted much concern of cognitive linguists too. Some of the cognitive researchers focused their minds too much on the classification of the semantic system of polysemous words ( 王德春,2002 ). Others lay their emphasis on the analysis of polysemous perception words or bodily-part words such ashand or heart . However, the research which systematically studies intern