【Abstract】Metonymy means the act of referring to something by the name of something else that is closely connected with it. In metonymy， it is easier to understand the whole thing or one part of it by referring to the obvious attributes. Hand， as an external body-part， is one of the most familiar body-parts to us human beings since it is of great importance in our daily life and work. As a consequence， the Hand concept with which humans study body-parts in language has already become an indispensable core word due to conventionality for thousands of years. Therefore， the Hand metonymy is chosen and studied in order to analyze its meaning in details， in the hope of disclosing the semantic characteristics and regularity of body-part words.

【Key words】hand; metonymy; Chinese; English

【作者簡介】蔡向前，男，西南交通大学希望学院，助教，硕士，研究方向：外国语言学及应用语言学、外语教学。

1. Hand by Definition

According to the modern Chinese dictionary， the fundamental meaning of hand reads as follows; the end part of the arm， which is able to hold something. The capability of doing or holding something is the functional feature. Based on the knowledge concerned with two basic qualities of hand， new meanings are developed.

2. Hand in Chinese

As hands function to hold or do something fundamentally， naturally， the two qualities correspond to how hands carry-act and what hands achieve-goal. In total， 17 senses of hand originate in metonymy， of which 13 ones are from the functional feature and the rest are from physical quality. Being able to carry out something is highlighted as hands are applied to serve a certain purpose. To save labor and time， machine is adequately employed in our life， as a result， hands are given the meaning equipment used at work to replace the hands. During the process of activities， all is centered on the agents， that are humans， contributing to the sense a person with special training in a job as well as a person occupying a major position in a field. For instance， singer refers to someone who sings in public or lacks experience. It is because we can achieve goals with skillful hands that we have expressions nice handwriting（一手好字）. Distinguishing the function between hand and other body-parts measure words is much necessary and significant. Take one well（一眼井）for instance， clearly， the quantifier function of the word eye is on the basis of outer appearance similar to the a well while that of hand is grounded on the functional perspective. In a word， humans recognize objects in terms of their different functions and good so that each word corresponds to them in different cognitive ways.  By far， on the basis of fundamental sense of hand develops 17 meanings in metonymy， new meanings originate from its physical and functional features in a radiative way.

3. Hand in English

In accordance with the sixth edition oxford advanced learners English-Chinese dictionary， the definition reads as follows; the part of body at the end part of the arm， including the fingers and thumb. It is found out that hand senses， in English， develops in a similar way of that of hand in Chinese， grounded on the basic qualities in respect to physics and function. The figure and size lead us to the meaning of something like or of the size of a hand， such as hand of banana of hand， hour-hand， minute-hand， second-hand （of a clock） and hand-breadth. The functional quality holding either refers to the cards dealt to each player in games of cards and the person holding the cards or denotes possession， custody， charge， authority， power， disposal. This sense gives rise to the sentence that the project is well in hand， which means this project is well under control. Based on the sense doing something of hand， it represents a person who is in relation to his action or employed by another in any manual work. Therefore， that a green hand indicates a person lack of experience and all hands on the desk means crew on a ship is understandable.

4.Summary

In comparison with the position and shape of hands， the functional quality is more important. As a result， the functional quality gets emphasized strongly in both English and Chinese， making the other two features almost invisible to us. It is easier to develop new senses from the functional quality of hands in metonymy.

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