Radial Categories of Head Body Parts: A Cognitive Study

This descriptive-analytic study explores the radial categories of the polysemous words of head (sar) domain in Persian. For this purpose the senses of these polysemous words were collected from Farhange Ruze Soxan, Farsnet, different digital books, weblogs and observation of people using these words. These senses were then categorized, and using the relations among the radial sets mentioned in Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (2007), the senses were examined in these categories. The relations including conceptual metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and image schemas were used for developing the radial categories shown in diagrams. In addition, in this study the following questions were addressed: is it possible to categorize and develop radial categories for the head body parts of polysemous words using the relations between the prototype and the extended senses? Which type of expressions including these words cannot be explained using these relations? Can these explanations be employed in lexicography and teaching languages? The data analysis indicated that radial categorization of the polysemous words can be formed using these relations, but the application of them for categorization of idioms was not possible. It seems that although idioms can be categorized using the meaning of the whole idiom, the relations mentioned for radial categories were not useful for this purpose. The results indicated that the proposed radial categories can be used in teaching vocabularies and modern lexicography.