The Application of Corpus Approach of Computer Technology to the
Research on Location ICM of Metonymy of Cognitive Linguistics
Ruifeng Luo
School of English Studies, Shanghai International Studies University,Shanghai, China
Foreign Languages Department, Sichuan Vocational and Technical College, Suining, Sichuan, China
Keywords: Metonymy, corpus, Location ICM, CCL.
Abstract: Corpus refers to a large collection of well-sampled and processed electronic texts, on which language
studies, theoretical or applied, can be conducted with the aid of computer tools. Metonymy is a vitally
important concept in Cognitive Linguistics and refers to the contiguity within the same domain. Traditional
methods such as introspection are employed in researching this topic and lack data support to be convincing.
The Corpus method is a newly utilized and empirical method to conduct linguistic research and contains the
language materials of real and the actual use of language. This paper takes advantage of CCL Corpus
(Center for Chinese Linguistics Corpus) to investigate Location ICM of metonymy and conduct the
empirical research to make metonymy research more objective and convincing.
1 INTRODUCTION
Based on the computer, corpus is the basic resource
that carries the language knowledge, is stored in the
language materials that actually appear in the actual
use of language, and the real corpus needs to be
processed to become useful resources. It is applied
to lexicography, language teaching, traditional
language research, and Research on statistics or
examples in Natural Language Processing. The
paper conducted a survey on the application of
corpus into language study by sellecting the numbers
of articles within recent 10 years from Chinese
National Knowledge Infrastructure(CNKI). From the
linear graph, we can see that from 2008 to 2015 the
number of the articles concerning the language study
under the corpus is continuously on the rise. In 2016,
the number reached the highest value to 2841
articles. However, in 2017, the number decreased
sharply to 1967 articles.
Linear graph 1: Number of Articles concerning language
study by Corpus
From the table below, we can see that from the
year 2009 to the year 2012, compared to the number
of previous years, the publication of the articles
grew very fast, amounting to 18.69%, 29.52%,
17.56% and 21.92% respectively. And from the year
2013 to the year 2015, the publication of the articles
grew slightly, with the only growth of 7.37%, 7.54%
and 4.83% respectively. In the year 2016, there was
a slight drop of the growth which declined by -
0.83% and in the year 2017, the articles suffered
from a sharp drop, declining by -30.77% compared
to the year 2016.
Luo, R.
The Application of Corpus Approach of Computer Technology to the Research on Location ICM of Metonymy of Cognitive Linguistics.
In 3rd International Conference on Electromechanical Control Technology and Transportation (ICECTT 2018), pages 593-598
ISBN: 978-989-758-312-4
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593

In the recent ten years, the publication of articles
concerning language study with the aid of corpus
underwent ups and downs. However, the corpus-
based approach to study Cognitive Linguistics is the
convining and efficient way to conduct empirical
researches. Using corpus to research metonymy of
Cognitive Linguistics is valuable. Metonymy is a
cognitive process in which one conceptual entity, the
vehicle, provides mental access to another
conceptual entity, the target,within the same domain,
or idealized cognitive modael (ICM) (Kovescses
2002:145).
Location ICM is one of the type metonymy and
Location-specific patterns of metonymy have raised
great interest among linguists in the past two
decades (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Pustejovsky
1995). However, most studies in metonymy have run
into limitations mainly due to the fact that they are
based on linguistic intuition rather than on real
occurring texts people use. Therefore, the studies are
demonstrated with selected examples to make a
particular point. Thus, it’s a worthwhile effort to
investigate the location-specific metonymies in
Chinese based on corpus data.
2 METHODS
To explore the location metonymies in current
Chinese, we selected BEIJING, the capital plus one
of the most prominent places of China, as the key
word for searching the corpus and conducted a
corpus-based investigation into its metonymic
patterns in naturally occurring Chinese. We
randomly sampled 1,000 lists of occurrences of
BEIJING from CCL corpus, and then manually
annotated all samples by highlighting the desired
text. The annotation procedure was conducted by
one team member and double-checked by other two
team members to make sure the reliability of the
result. Then we counted the number of each pattern
and performed the statistical analysis to dig deeper
into the corpus.
3 RESULTS
The samples contain 1,297 usages of BEIJING
altogether and 96 of them (7.4%) are used
metonymically. A summary of the results is given in
Table 1.
Table1: Year-on-year growth of the articles
Metony
mic
patterns
Num
ber
Percentag
e
Linguistic Examples
PLACE
FOR
PRODU
CT
55 57.29% Beijinghua “Beijing dialect”
Beijingyin “Beijing accent”
Beijing hukou “Beijing
hukou”
B
eijingdui “Beijing team”
PLACE
FOR
ORGAN
IZATIO
N
23 23.96% Beijing fangmian “Bejing”
Beijing de taidu “Bejing’s
attitude”
Fangwen Beijing ”visit
Beijing”
PLACE
FOR
PEOPLE
15 15.63% Lao Beijing ”Beijing locals”
Xiaoxi chuandao Beijing
“news reached Beijing”
Beijing de jiaoao “pride of
Beijing”
PLACE
FOR
EVENT
3 3.13% Beijing jingshen “Beijing
spirit”
Beijing aoyunhui “Beijing
Olympic Games”
Total 96 100% --
The following sections would give a detailed
account of the results of these patterns for each of
the location-specific types, specifically, PLACE
FOR PRODUCT, PLACE FOR ORGANIZATION,
PLACE FOR PEOPLE as well as PLACE FOR
EVENT.
Table 2. Metonymic patterns of Beijing
Year Number of
articles
Year-on-year growth
2008 1070
2009 1270 18.69%
2010 1645 29.52%
2011 1934 17.56%
2012 2358 21.92%
2013 2532 7.37%
2014 2723 7.54%
2015 2864 4.83%
2016 2841 -0.83%
2017 1967 -30.77%
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3.1 PLACE FOR PRODUCT
As can be seen in Pie Chart 1, PLACE FOR
PRODUCT is overall the most frequent pattern,
consisting of 55 instances of metonymic usages,
amounting to 57.29% of exemplars of location-
specific patterns in the corpus. The place stands for a
product manufactured there (Markert & Nissim,
2003).
Pie Chart 1: Percentage of PLACE FOR PRODUCT
Metonymy of Beijing
Interestingly, there is no illustration of this type
of usage in our corpus. Yet, we observed some
unconventional metonymies of BEIJING in this
category. An example is the use of beijinghua which
metonymically refers to the language which is
spoken only in Beijing, with words or grammar that
are slightly different from other varieties of Chinese.
Another typical example is beijingyin which denotes
the way people pronounces the words of Chinese,
showing that they come from Beijing area. In our
data, there are also 25 occurrences of Beijing hukou
meaning the registered residence in Beijing, account
for 50.9% instances of the metonymy PLACE FOR
PRODUCT. This highlights a social-cultural
perspective of metonymical patterns in current
Chinese, reflecting a booming real estate market in
China, especially in first-tier cities like Beijing. In
addition to the aforementioned, we also found
examples of Beijingdui which metonymically refers
to the basketball, football or other team on behalf of
Beijing. As we can see, the metonymic sense of
BEIJING is often triggered by combing with other
lexical items, such as hua “dialect”, yin “accent” or
hukou “hukou”.
3.2 PLACE FOR ORGANIZATION
In metonymy, one expression is used to refer to the
standard referent of a related one (Lakoff and
Johnson 1980.) In our corpus, we found 23 instances
of samples in which BEIJING stood for various
organizations, depending on the context in which it
occurred. This PLACE FOR ORGANIZATION
pattern ranks the second among BEIJING’s
metonymic usage, taking up 23.96% of all
exemplars instantiating location-specific patterns.
Pie Chart 2: Percentage of PLACE FOR
ORGANIZATION Metonymy of Beijing
For example,
(1) Caojuren shifen xingfen zhi deng dedao
beijing fangmian renke hou, jiang pai daibiao fu
dalu zuo zuihou shangding, tongyi zuguo zhi da.ye.
Cao Juren got very excited that once being
approved by Beijing, Taiwan authorities would send
delegates to mainland for final negotiation of
reunification of motherland.
(2) zai ming.chao de zhengzhi douzheng
zhong,nanjing ge guan shili, yu beijing fangmian
xiang juedou.
In the political struggle of Ming dynasty,
officials’ alliance in Nanjing often fights with those
in Beijing.
(3) zai weilai de shier ge yue nei,guoji aoweihui
jiang beijing fangmian miqie hezuo.
Within the next 12 months, the International
Olympic Committee will go on working closely with
Beijing
(4) beijing fangmian yidan zhengshi pizhun
jinwan fashe,yiqie chengxu ji ke.
Once authorities in Beijing approved of launch
tonight, all procedures can be started.
(5) women daibiaotuan meitian jishi jiang huitan
de qingkuang he neirong baogao Beijing.
The Application of Corpus Approach of Computer Technology to the Research on Location ICM of Metonymy of Cognitive Linguistics
595

Our delegation daily reports the meetings to
Beijing without delay .
(6) yizhayan ershi tian guoqu le,maobing haishi
cha bu chulai,zhihao baogao beijing jiejue.
Twenty days gone, the problem is still
undetected. We have to ask Beijing for a solution.
(7)zhongguo zai zhe fangmian bu hui dui taiwan
“chu nanti”,beijing de taidu qujue.yu taibei de
zuofa.
Chinese government will by no means make
things difficult on Taiwan in this respect, and what it
does depends on the practice of Taiwan authorities.
(8)nikesong zongtong jiang yu 1972 nian chu
fangwen beijing.
President Nixon will visit China in 1972.
(9) yingguo lundun zhengjiaosuo guanyuan shu
zhou lai,liangci zutuan.
Officials of London stock exchange have visited
Beijing in groups twice during the past few weeks
(10) jin.nian qiutian ta jiang shuailing yi.ge
2000.ren de,youhao daibiaotuan shenchuan
yundongfu fangwen Beijing.
This fall, he will lead a delegation including
2,000 people with sportswear and visit Beijing
As the capital of China, Beijing is often
conceptualized as the synonym of the Chinese
government. Examples (1), (2), (5), (7) and (8)
illustrate a metonymical pattern of location in which
Beijing stands for the Chinese government at a
specific period of time, be it Ming Dynasty or the
People’s Republic of China. In addition, Beijing can
also be used to refer to various organizations in
China. For example, the Beijing Olympic
Committee is probably involved in (3) and (10).
While in (4), (6), and (9), Beijing is likely to be
devised to map into the organization which is
responsible for satellite launch, technical support or
securities trading. The main character of this sort of
metonymy display itself in two aspects. First, what
conceptualization the location like BEIJING invokes
is largely context-dependent. Second, the metonymic
usage of BEIJING often appear in certain linguistic
patterns, such as Bejing fangmian, Bejing de taidu,
and fangwen Beijing , etc.
3.3 PLACE FOR PEOPLE
In the metonymy PLACE FOR PEOPLE, BEIJING
is used to stand for people or the whole population
associated with Beijing. There are a total of 15 cases
of such usage, accounting for 15.63% of all
instances of the location-specific patterns in the
corpus.
Pie Chart 3: Percentage of PLACE FOR PEOPLE
Metonymy of Beijing
For example,
(11) beijingshi shizheng jianshe jin nian fazhan
xunsu,shirong biande shi xuduo “laoBeijing” dou bu
gan xiangren le.
The municipal construction of Beijing are
developing rapidly in recent years, which changes
the city so much that even many Beijing locals can’t
recognize it.
(12) ta xihuan lao beijing de fengturenqing,duo
nian lai yizhi in qingx shouji jishu lao Beijing.ren
shenghuo de ziliao....
He loves local conditions and customs of Beijing
and has been committed to the collection of
materials which give an account of old Beijing
lifestyle…
(13)xiaoxi chuandao Beijing,zhuanjia xuezhe
men xinxi xianggao,erbai nian lai de yuanwang
jiuyao shixian le.
When the news reached Beijing, the experts
delightedly informed each other that two centuries of
dream was finally coming true.
(14)zhexie huiying zhe huangjia qipai de
yuanlin,shi Beijing de jiaoao.
The gardens reflecting royal elegance is the pride
of Beijing.
(15) Beijng guopu shi beijing de jiaoao.
Beijing dried fruit is the pride of Beijing.
In (11), lao beijingstands for people whose
family is deeply rooted in Beijing and has been
living there for a long time. This concept, which is
coined to distinguish from the outsiders who now
turn into Beijing residents, reflects a certain socio-
cultural trend in China. Big cities like Beijng and
Shanghai have attracted many people from other
parts of China or even from other countries to obtain
residency. Such movement of people is triggered by
first-rate resources and opportunities there. It is
important to note that lao beijingmight also refer to
anything which is characteristic of Beijing, as lao
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596

Beijing de fengturenqingin (12). Thus, how to
conceptualize a location is practically relied on its
context. For example, in (13), the reference of
Beijing is specified via ensuring lexemes zhuanjia
xuezhe. Often, the explicit referent is left
underspecified (Markert&Nissim 2003), as in (14)
and (15), where the referent of Beijingcould be the
government, an organization, or the whole
population.Therefore, it is a challenging job to
assign a location in Chinese to its metonymical
categories in a corpus, which indicates that manual
annotation is inevitable considering its complexity
and context-dependence.
3.4 PLACE FOR EVENT
The metonymy PLACE FOR EVENT, where a place
stands for something that happens there, is relatively
rare in our corpus. There are only 3 instances of this
metonymy, with a proportion of 3.13% in the
metonymies we summarized.
Pie Chart 4: Percentage of PLACE FOR EVENT
Metonymy of Beijing
For example,
(16) huafei juzi chengwei beijing aoyunhui de
zanzhushang.
Spending a huge sum of money to sponsor
Beijing Olympic Games
(17) ta xiwang canjia lianheguo tebie lianda de
zhongguo daibiaotuan jixu baochi “beijing
jingshen”,yu lianheguo yidao zhili.yu beijing de
mubiao.
She expects that Chinese delegation at UN
special session could cling to Beijing Spirit and
dedicate to the fulfillment of Beijing Action Agenda.
This category is demonstrated with quite clear-
cut examples as in Beijing aoyunhui, which triggers
a conceptualization of an event, i.e. Olympic Games
in 2008, that happened in Beijing. In (17), Beijing
jingshen poses obstacle in conceptualizing its
metonymic reference. For such ambiguous cases, the
metonymic meaning can be obtained by inference
from the contexts. In this case, what she wants to
remind of is the spirit of Beijing Platform for
Action, an influential event that happened in Beijing
4 CONCLUSIONS
In this section, we used BEIJING as an exemplary
case to explore the category as well as the
distributions of location metonymies in Chinese. We
found four metonymic patterns related to the use of
Beijing, namely, PLACE FOR PRODUCT, PLACE
FOR ORGANIZATIN, PLACE FOR PEOPLE and
PLACE FOR EVENT. Out of naturally occurring
texts, we observed some unconventional
metonymies in the category PLACE FOR
PRODUCT that a location was not mapped onto
materialized products but concepts like hua, yin or
hukou. Additionally, we found some linguistic
patterns which might trigger metonymic meanings
of a location, such as Bejing fangmian, Bejing de
taidu, or fangwen Beijing. What’s more, the
conceptualization of a location rests largely with the
context it appears, for instance, lao Beijing or
Beijing de jiaoao and so on, which verifies that the
understanding of metonymies is open-ended. Also,
the study on metonymies can to a certain extent
reveals some dynamic change of language, such as
hukou and Beijing locals which come into being to
meet socio-cultural needs in recent decades. Lastly,
we confirmed the varieties of location metonymies
in Chinese as well as the complexity and wanting in
further exploration considering the fact that the
current corpus is relatively small and more sampling
should be included to uncover the metonymic
panorama of the Chinese.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research was financially supported by the
foundation of Education Department of Sichuan
Province, China (Grant NO.15SB0255 & Grant
NO.16SB0293)
REFERENCES
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. 1980. Metaphors we live by.
Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Markert K, & Nissim M. 2003. Corpus-based metonymy
analysis [J]. Metaphor and Symbol, 18(3): 175-188.
Pustejovsky, J. 1995. The generative lexicon. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
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Stefanowitsch,A.2006.Corpus-based approaches to
metaphor and metonymy.Berlin:Mouton de Gruyter.
Stefan,G.2012. Corpus linguistics, theoretical linguistics,
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Ruifeng LUO is PhD candidate of Shanghai International
Studies University and lecturer of Sichuan Vocational
and Technical College of China, whose research
interest is Cognitive Linguistics.
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