Analysis of the Meaning of Japanese Idioms Using “Te” in Cognitive Linguistic Perspective

Abstract

In Japanese, idioms are constructed from many words such as meanings, body parts, numbers, colors, natural objects, animals and plants. This study aims to analyze the meaning of the Japanese idiom te based on the construction pattern, to analyze the classification of the meaning of the kanyouku te, and to describe the relationship between the lexical meaning and the idiomatic meaning kanyouku te, and to analyze idiom te which has more than one idiomatic meaning in term of cognitive linguistic perspective. The method used in this study is descriptive analysis and is divided into three stages, namely data collection, data analysis, and final presentation of data analysis in the form of drawing conclusions. The theory used in this study is Miharu's theory of idiom analysis based on construction patterns, Inoue's theory of idiom analysis based on meaning classification and Momiyama's theory of idiom analysis based on the relationship between meanings. There are 16 kanyouku studied in this study, which consists of three keiyoudoushi kanyouku and fourteen doushi kanyouku. However, it can be concluded that there are one kanyouku which relate to body, character, and attitude, six kanyouku which indicate action or activity, nine kanyouku which indicate circumstances, degree, or grade level. Besides that, seven kanyouku have more than one idiomatic meaning. From this study it can be said that sixteen kanyouku have been studied using the extension of metaphorical meaning, metonym, and synecdoche.